What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEWhat is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThere is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEAccuracy is twin brother to honesty, and inaccuracy to dishonesty.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThere is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNESunlight is painting.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNENobody will use other people’s experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEI 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 HAWTHORNEWhat we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNECaresses, 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 HAWTHORNELife is made up of marble and mud.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEGenerosity is the flower of justice.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEIt is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEAt no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNESalt is white and pure – there is something holy in salt.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThis above all: be true, be true, be true.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThe book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE