Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes
19th-century American novelist and short story writer, best-known today for his many short stories and his romance novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun.
(1804 - 1864)
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A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.
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A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
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A man - poet, prophet, or whatever he may be - readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.
[Conceit]
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A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
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A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.
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A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.
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Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.
[Accuracy]
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Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or in age, it has out-lived its privilege of spring time and sprightliness.
[Laughter]
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All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.
[Bravery]
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At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing-day.
[Youth]
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Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
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Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. - Standing without, you can see no glory, nor can imagine any, but standing within every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.
[Faith]
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Easy reading is damn hard writing.
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Every day of my life makes me feel more and more how seldom a fact is accurately stated; how almost invariably when a story has passed through the mind of a third person it becomes, so far as regards the impression it makes in further repetitions, little better than a falsehood; and this, too, though the narrator be the most truth-seeking person in existence.
[Facts]
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Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.
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Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
[Happiness]
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Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
[Happiness]
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If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones, and others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.
[Architecture]
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In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.
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Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments - all that concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation.
[Insincerity]
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