The 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 HAWTHORNEEasy reading is damn hard writing.
More Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes
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Easy reading is damn hard writing.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure – that is the choicest of all.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
The trees reflected in the river – they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years’ standing are as effective as ever.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
Families are always rising and falling in America.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
I 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 HAWTHORNE -
It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
Happiness 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 HAWTHORNE -
Moonlight is sculpture.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
Eager 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 HAWTHORNE -
A man’s bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
At 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 HAWTHORNE -
Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
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 HAWTHORNE -
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one’s self a fool.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE -
There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE