Nathaniel Hawthorne famous quotes

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Self Esteem #Greatness #Destiny

We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Literature #Forests

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Depression #Being Yourself #Men

...happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release...
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Release #Found

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Marriage #Fashion #Love One Another

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Honesty #Integrity #Writing

A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Hero #Heroism #World

Easy reading is damn hard writing.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Reading #Writing #Easy

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.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Inspirational #Life #Motivational

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Men #Light #Shadow

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Taken #Garden #Sight

We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Dream #Book #Sleep

Moonlight is sculpture.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Sunset #Sunrise #Sculpture

When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Sky #Clouds #Earth

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Art #Spring #Roots

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Thinking #Artist #Perspective

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Time #Shadow #Eternity

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Autumn #Sunshine #Air

The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Law Of Attraction #Mind #Attraction

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Friendship #Writing #Family And Friends

I wish I had the gift of making rhymes, for methinks there is poetry in my head and heart since I have been in love with you.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Love #Heart #Wish

Life is made up of marble and mud.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Life #Mud #Made

In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and the revelry above may cause us to forget their existence...
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Heart #Light #Dungeons

Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Dream #Heart #Evil

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Love #Heart #Dark

What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Real #House #Guilt

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Men #Appreciate #Intellectual

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Love #Life #Heart

it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Hate #Love Is #Hatred

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Nature #Children #Roots

I have come to see the nonsense of trying to describe fine scenery.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Nature #Trying #Nonsense

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Brother #Honesty #Twins

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Spiritual #May #Disease

She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Freedom #Weight

She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Music #Voice #Liquid

And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Long #Waiting #World

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Love #Relationship #Passion

No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Summer #Heart #Two

Death should take me while I am in the mood.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Death #Mood #Should

Generosity is the flower of justice.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Flower #Justice #Generosity

Do anything, save to lie down and die!
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Lying #Down And

I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh it was. My very heart leapt with the sound.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Heart #Sound #Equine

Sunlight is painting.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Pain #Painting #Sunlight

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Love #Passion #Heart

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Happiness #Men #Joy

Is it a fact-or have I dreamt it-that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Mean #Greatness #World

When the Artist rises high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Beautiful #Eye #Reality

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Literature #Might #Soil

Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Music #Song #Voice

This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#People #Ease #World

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Death #Suicide #Dream

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.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Faith #Light #Splendor

To do nothing is the way to be nothing.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Way

What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Hands #Needs

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Doors #Breakfast #Tables

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.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Should #Provision #Intensity

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Nature #Climbing #Mountain

Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Men #Enemy #Latter

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Love #Selfish #Inspire

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Nature #Feelings #May

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.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Love #Expression #Roots

In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Ghost #Made #Interest

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Spiritual #Hate #Heart

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us 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.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Happiness #Dream #Literature

It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Hate #Play #Selfishness

A man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Men #Bewilderment

What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Evil #Thumbs #Scales

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Speak #Nonsense #Gods Will

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Men #Thinking #Serious

The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Sunshine #Long #Unity

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Fashion #Writing #Romance

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Dream #Writing #Men

As far as my experience goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in this age, there appears to be a fellow-feeling among them, which had not heretofore been developed. As men, they ask nothing better than to be on equal terms with their fellow-men; and as authors, they have thrown aside their proverbial jealousy, and acknowledge a generous brotherhood.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Men #Feelings #Brotherhood

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Heart #Years #Age

A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all ; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one which you supposed would introduce you to the hidden pearl.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Expectations #Onions #Coats

This dull river has a deep religion of its own; so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though, perhaps, unconsciously.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Rivers #Soul #Religion

Salt is white and pure - there is something holy in salt.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Food #White #Salt

Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrow, and uses fire-arms -- a pistol -- perhaps a revolver.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Arrows #Fire #Arms

As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Country #House #Tree

Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Happiness #Guests #May

That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Happiness #Lying #Reality

Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Gold #Inheritance #Sickness

No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Heaven #May #Fountain

If we would know what heaven is before we come thither, let us retire into the depths of our own spirits, and we shall find it there among holy thoughts and feelings.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Heaven #Feelings #Depth

It is a little remarkable, that - though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends - an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Book #Taken #Littles

The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Ideas #People #House

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Life #Figures

Never was there a dingier, uglier, less picturesque city than London ... it is really wonderful that so much brick and stone, for centuries together, should have been built up with so poor a result.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Cities #Together #Stones

An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Marriage #Heart #Hands

When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart. They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Heart #Purpose #Matter

And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Weed #Sweet #Apples

Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Needs #Cottages #Care

What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Men #Solitude #Heat

By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Heart #Blood #Guilt

It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Ambition #Reality #Men

Halfway down a by-street of one of our New England towns stands a rusty wooden house, with seven acutely peaked gables, facing towards various points of the compass, and a huge, clustered chimney in the midst. The street is Pyncheon Street; the house is the old Pyncheon House; and an elm-tree, of wide circumference, rooted before the door, is familiar to every town-born child by the title of the Pyncheon Elm.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Children #Doors #House

Yesterday I visited the British Museum; an exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much at once; and I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart. The present is burdened too much with the past.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Crush #Heart #Past

Keep the imagination sane--that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Imagination #Heaven #Communion

There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow--the latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it.
-- Nathaniel Hawthorne

#Happiness #Sorrow #Substance