I have come to see the nonsense of attempting to describe fine scenery. There is no such possibility. If scenery could be adequately reproduced in words, there would have been no need of God’s making it in reality.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNENobody, 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.
More Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes
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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.
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Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.
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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.
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It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
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Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
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The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure – that is the choicest of all.
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Dream strange things and make them look like truth.
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Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.
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Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.
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Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.
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The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view.
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Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.
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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.
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Life is made up of marble and mud.
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A man’s bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE