658 Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb’s bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!

They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life.

Thou, – dost thou pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence! Let us sign crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in the likeness of holy symbols!

If human love hath power to penetrate the veil – and hath it not? – then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them.

Woman, I could wellnigh pity thee!” said Roger Chillingworth, unable to restrain a thrill of admiration too; for there was a quality almost majestic in the despair which she expressed. “Thou hadst great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been. I pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature!

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.

The moment when a man’s head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.

Blessed are all simple emotions, be they dark or bright! It is the lurid intermixture of the two that produces the illuminating blaze of the infernal regions.

To be left alone in the wide world with scarcely a friend, – this makes the sadness which, striking its pang into the minds of the young and the affectionate, teaches them too soon to watch and interpret the spirit-signs of their own hearts.