658 Quotes by 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.

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

Let the attempt be made, at whatever risk.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Dream strange things and make them look like truth.

The best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death.

I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.

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

And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.