658 Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.

She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.

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

Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!

The world, that grey-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable.

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

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

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.