To do nothing is the way to be nothing.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNETo do nothing is the way to be nothing.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThe greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one’s self a fool.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNESalt is white and pure – there is something holy in salt.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThis world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEOh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
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.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEI 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 HAWTHORNEWe dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEHappiness 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 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 HAWTHORNEEager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream.
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 HAWTHORNETo 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 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 HAWTHORNEMountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEMoonlight is sculpture.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE