658 Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

It might be that he lived a more real life within his thoughts...

Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God’s care and pity for every separate need.

Every gesture, every word, and even the silence of those with whom she came in contact, implied, and often expressed, that she was banished, and as much alone as if she inhabited another sphere, or communicated with the common nature by other organs and senses than the rest of human kind.

His error lay in supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in applying his own little life span as the measure of an interminable acheivement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it or against it.

O Father in Heaven – if Thou art still my Father – what is this being which I have brought into the world?

America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women.

She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, as intricate, and shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate.

There is no good on earth; and sin is but a name. Come, devil; for to thee is this world given.