Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

About Nathaniel Hawthorne:

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer.
A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it is gone. But sometimes--always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate--there comes a sense of second youth, gushing out of the heart's joy at being in love; o...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

... for when a man's spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offenses, but never resentful of great ones.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement--however serious, however trifling--all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite of our ridiculous...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

When he is cheerful--when the sun shines into his mind--then I venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no further. It is holy ground where the shadow falls!

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their o...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

He had that sense, or inward prophecy,-- which a young man had better never have been born than not to have, and a mature man had better die at once than utterly to relinquish,-- that we are not doomed to creep on forever in the old bad way, but that...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its anc...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

That Jim Crow there in the window," answered the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to school; "the one that has not a broken foot.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Possibly, he was in a state of second growth and recovery, and was constantly assimilating nutriment for his spirit and intellect from sights, sounds, and events which passed as a perfect void to persons more practised with the world. As all is activ...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Technologies of easy travel "give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrou...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

he seemed to be in quest for mental food, not heart sustenance.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Shall we never never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

What's that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?" asked Scicpio. "And what for do you look so black at me?" "No matter, darky," said the carpenter. "Do you think nobody is to look black but yourself?

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his high...

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out of them.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Author Bio

  • NameNathaniel Hawthorne
  • DescriptionAmerican novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1864)
  • AliasesNathaniel Hathorne
  • BornJuly 4, 1804
  • DiedMay 19, 1864
  • CountryUnited States Of America
  • ProfessionWriter; Diplomat; Novelist