658 Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

A windy day, with wind northwest, cool, with a prevalence of dull gray clouds over the sky, but with brief quick glimpses of sunshine.

You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction.

Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Is it a fact—or have I dreamt it—that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?

In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning point.

Not to be deficient in this particular, the author has provided himself with a moral — the truth, namely, that the wrongdoing of one generation lives into the successive ones.

By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street. field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot

What we call real estate — the solid ground to build a house on — is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.