Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne

A vast deal of human sympathy runs along the electric line of needlework, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humble seamstress.

A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.

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

What a sweet reverence is that when a young man deems his mistress a little more than mortal and almost chides himself for longing to bring her close to his heart.

It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued.

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?

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

How is it possible to sayan unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world!

Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day.

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.

Never was there a dingier, uglier, less picturesque city than London ... it is really wonderful that so much brick and stone, for centuries together, should have been built up with so poor a result.

If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.

it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

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.

I wish I had the gift of making rhymes, for methinks there is poetry in my head and heart since I have been in love with you.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom.

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.