Nobody, 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 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 HAWTHORNEWe sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
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 HAWTHORNEEasy reading is damn hard writing.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNESunlight is painting.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEFamilies are always rising and falling in America.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNETime flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEWhat is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEOur 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 HAWTHORNEI have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEI want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEThis world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
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 HAWTHORNEThough we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEI find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNEUgliness without tact is horrible.
NATHANIEL HAWTHORNE