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This dull river has a deep religion of its own; so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though, perhaps, unconsciously.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Aug. 7, 1842
There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter
There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Aug. 30, 1842
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, The Scarlet Letter
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, American Note-Books, 1836
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, "Wakefield," Twice Told Tales
Life is made up of marble and mud.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables
A human spirit may find no insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom House.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Mar. 23, 1840
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, Young Goodman Brown
In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, preface, The Snow-Image
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.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Marble Faun
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, American Note-Books
Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrow, and uses fire-arms -- a pistol -- perhaps a revolver.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Jun. 9, 1853
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Marble Faun
What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Aug. 22, 1837
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter
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, The Scarlet Letter
Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections, as leaves are to the life of trees. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Mar. 9, 1853
Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, 1836
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, The Marble Faun
The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, "Young Goodman Brown"
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Scarlet Letter
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The Blithedale Romance
There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, "Young Goodman Brown"
Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb! for I suppose he was dumb at the Creation, and must go round an entire circle in order to return to that blessed state.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Apr. 1841
Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, "The Notch of the White Mountains," Sketches from Memory
No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, 1836
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, American Note-Books, 1841
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, American Note-Books, Sep. 1836
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, The Scarlet Letter
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, The House of the Seven Gables
Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE, American Note-Books, Sep. 1836
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