658 Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.

In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt.

Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.

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.

And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.

What little bird of scarlet plumage may this be?...''I am Mother's child,' answered the scarlet vision, 'and my name is Pearl!

It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman