Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne

At last, after creeping as it were, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge, which, sooner or later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebian

At almost every step in life, we meet with young men of just about Holgrave's age, for whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, even after mucha nd careful inquiry, we never happen to hear another word. The effervescence of youth and passion, and the fresh gloss of the intellect and imagination, endow them with a false brilliancy, which makes fools of themselves and other people.

Ninety-nine people out of a hundred, I suppose, would have been frightened out of their wits by the very first of his ugly shapes, and would have taken to their heels at once. For, one of the hardest things in this world is, to see the difference between real dangers and imaginary ones.

How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and even coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate! Fate delights to thwart us thus. Passion will choose his own time to rush upon the scene, and lingers sluggishly behind when an appropriate adjustment of events would seem to summon his appearance.

It would break her dear little heart; and I'd rather break my own!

The young deemed themselves happy. The elder spirits, if they knew that mirth was but the counterfeit of happiness, yet followed the false shadow willfully, because at least her garments glittered brightest. Sworn triflers of a lifetime, they would not venture among the sober truths of life not even to be truly blest.

The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadow scope of time, and, living once for all eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.

Families are always rising and falling in America.

It is the credit of human nature that, except in the case where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.

It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other.

a bookworm-one of those men who are born to gnaw dead thoughts. His clothes, you see, are covered with the dust of libraries. He has no inward fountain of ideas... - Earth's Holocaust, Hawthorne

the wrong-doing of one generation lives into the successive ones, and, divesting itself of every temporary advantage, becomes a pure and uncontrollable mischief;

En cuanto a Rappaccini, se dice de él que cuida más a la ciencia que a la humanidad, y yo, que le conozco bien, puedo responder de la verdad que tal afirmación.

The wet sidewalks gleam with a broad sheet of red light. The raindrops glitter as if the sky were pouring down rubies. The spouts gush with fire. Methinks the scene is an emblem of the deceptive glare which mortals throw around their footsteps in the moral world, thus bedazzling themselves till they forget the impenetrable obscurity that hems them in, and that can be dispelled only by radiance from above.

And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon-after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals-had given one farewell touch of a spirit's joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables

Ahora, si tu aliento es por fortuna tan fatal para nosotros como para todos los demás, unamos nuestros labios en un beso de odio inexpresable, ¡y muramos así!

Miserable!" exclaimed Rappaccini. "What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy—misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath—misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?

Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in thinking of it.

When we see how little we can express, it is a wonder that any man ever takes up a pen a second time.

O, espíritu débil, egoísta, indigno, que aún podía soñar con una unión y felicidad terrenales depués de haber agraviado con tan amargas e injustas palabras el profundo amor que por él sentía Beatrice.

Bigotry; self-conceit; an insolent curiosity; a meddlesome temper; a cold-blooded criticism, founded on a shallow interpretation of half-perceptions; a monstrous scepticism in regard to any conscience or any wisdom, except one's own; a most irreverent propensity to thrust Providence aside, and substitute one's self in its awful place,—out of these, and other motives as miserable as these, comes your idea of duty!

Ella debía pasar dolorosamente, con su corazón destrozado, a través de las fronteras del tiempo; debía lavar sus heridas en alguna fuene del Paraíso, y olvidar su pena en la luz de la inmortalidad; ¡y allí estaría a salvo!

Habría querido ser amada, no temida - murmuró Beatrice, desplomándose en el suelo-. Pero ahora y no importa.

There he dwelt among poverty-stricken wretches, sinners, and forlorn good people, Irish, and whomsoever else were neediest.