| |  | | | | | Quotations by author » Nathaniel Hawthorne
American short-story Writer and Novelist, master of the allegorical and symbolic tale. One of the greatest fiction writers in American literature. 1804-1864 | | Quotes: 21 - 40 of 80 | Pages: First Previous 1 2 3 4 Next Last | | | | | | 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 | | Happiness | | | Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. | | Happiness | | | I only regret that I have but one life to give for my country. | | Patriotism | | | I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; /neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering. | | Uncategorized | | | 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. | | Uncategorized | | | In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain. | | Uncategorized | | | Is it a fact -- or have I dreamt it -- that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time? | | Uncategorized | | | 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. | | Uncategorized | | | It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. | | Uncategorized | | | It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at the bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance and the other in a dusky and lurid glow. | | Hate; Love; Passion; Philosophy | | | It is a good lesson /though it may often be a hard one /for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at. | | Uncategorized | | | It is not the statesman, the warrior, or the monarch that survives, but the despised poet, whom they may have fed with their crumbs, and to whom they owe that they are now or have a name | | Uncategorized | | | It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. from The Scarlet Letter | | Uncategorized | | | Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a love-born of God’s care for every need. | | God | | | Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality. | | Uncategorized | | | Life is made up of marble and mud. | | Life | | | Life is the art of being well deceived; and in order that the deception may 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 | | Life | | | 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. | | Love | | | Man's own youth is the world's youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth's granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes. | | Uncategorized | | | Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them. | | Mankind | | | | | | | |
