I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEI have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
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 HAWTHORNEWhat we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEGenerosity is the flower of justice.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEHappiness 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 HAWTHORNENobody will use other people’s experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThis above all: be true, be true, be true.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNETrusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
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 HAWTHORNEHappiness is like a butterfly.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThis world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThe greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one’s self a fool.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEWhen 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 HAWTHORNEAccuracy is twin brother to honesty, and inaccuracy to dishonesty.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEJust 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 HAWTHORNEThe trees reflected in the river – they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE