658 Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

...if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom...

How is it possible to sayan unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world!

We must not think too unkindly even of the east wind. It is not, perhaps, a wind to be loved, even in its benignest moods; but there are seasons when I delight to feel its breath upon my cheek, though it be never advisable to throw open my bosom and take it into my heart, as I would its gentle sisters of the south and west.

She and her husband fell asleep with hands tenderly clasped, and awoke, from visions of unearthly radiance, to meet the more blessed light of one another's eyes.

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.

Shame, Depair, Soltude! These had been her teachers, stern and wild ones,- and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.

Women are safer in perilous situations and emergencies than men, and might be still more so if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry of manhood.

Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness, within those precincts, and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain!