658 Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

the voices, talking so strangely in the empty air, passed on through the forest, where no church had ever been gathered or solitary Christian prayed.

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted for too long a series of generations in the same worn-out soil.

Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.

In the little chaos of Pearl's character there might be seen emerging-and could have been from the very first-the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage-an uncontrollable will-a sturdy pride which might be disciplined into self-respect-and a bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them.

A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish. Thus Hester Prynne, whose heart had lost its regular and healthy throb, wandered without a clue in the dark labyrinth of mind; now turned aside by an insurmountable precipice; now starting back from a deep chasm. There was wild and ghastly scenery all around her, and a home and comfort nowhere.

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash.

Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash--and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumberable editions of The Lamplighter (by Maria Susanna Cummins), and other books neither better nor worse? Worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by the hundred thousand.

with a heart as full of reminiscences about her dead husband and children, and her dead friends of long ago, as a burial-ground is full of storied gravestones.