Top 299 Quotes & Sayings by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life is made up of marble and mud.

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Happiness 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.

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.

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.

We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.

Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.

Sunlight is painting.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.

Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

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.

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.

A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.

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.

A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.

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.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

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.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

Moonlight is sculpture.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

Caresses, 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.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure - that is the choicest of all.

We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.

Let the attempt be made, at whatever risk.

If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one's self a fool.

Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!

Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity.

There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.

We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

Happiness is not found in things you possess, but in what you have the courage to release.

The washing of dishes does seem to me the most absurd and unsatisfactory business that I ever undertook. If, when once washed, they would remain clean for ever and ever (which they ought in all reason to do, considering how much trouble it is), there would be less occasion to grumble; but no sooner is it done, than it requires to be done again. On the whole, I have come to the resolution not to use more than one dish at each meal.

This above all: be true, be true, be true.

Generosity is the flower of justice.

She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

Some illusions...are the shadows of great truths.

To do nothing is the way to be nothing.

A man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.

The trees reflected in the river - they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.

Families are always rising and falling in America.