Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne

She seeks to place herself above the sympathies of our common nature, which envelopes all human souls. See if that nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring her level with the lowest!

Oh, how stubbornly does love,—or even that cunning semblance of love which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into the heart,—how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment

But it were folly to lay any stress on stories of this kind, which are sure to spring up around such an event as that now related, and which, as in the present case, sometimes prolong themselves for ages afterwards, like the toadstools that indicate where the fallen and buried trunk of a tree has long since mouldered into the earth.

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!

But as for Rappaccini, it is said of him — and I, who know the man well, can answer for its truth — that he cares infinitely more for science than for mankind. His patients are interesting to him only as subjects for some new experiment. He would sacrifice human life, his own among the rest, or whatever else was dearest to him, for the sake of adding so much as a grain of mustard seed to the great heap of his accumulated knowledge.

The road grew wilder and drearier and more faintly traced, and vanished at length, leaving him in the heart of the dark wilderness, still rushing onward with the instinct that guides mortal man to evil.

take just one peep!

On all sides I could hear the creaking of the bedsteads, as the brethren of Blithedale started from slumber, and thrust themselves into their habiliments, all awry, no doubt, in their haste to begin the reformation of the world.

Había dicho la pura verdad y, sin embargo, la había transformado en la peor de las falsedades.

dismal severity of the Puritanic code of law, which

man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.

A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away.

Long, long may it be, ere he comes again! His hour is one of darkness, and adversity, and peril. But should domestic tyranny oppress us, or the invader's step pollute our soil, still may the Gray Champion come

Burlacul se simte-ntotdeauna tras pe sfoara cand stie, sau banuieste, ca vreuna din femeile pe care le cunoaste s-a deconspirat singura.

They looked neither older nor younger now; the beards of the aged were no whiter, nor could the creeping babe of yesterday walk on his feet today...

A trait si-a iubit si asta face si acum! In trandafirul asta de-o frumusete perfecta nu mai e nici o petala nedeschisa, nici o picatura de roua pe care n-au vazut-o razele soarelui.

Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns, and prove myself awake by the sharp touch of pain!

The most powerful minds are not always the best acquainted with their own feelings.

It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not that they gape so long and wide—but so quickly close again!

Shakespeare has surface beneath surface to an immeasurable depth, adapted to the plummet-line of every reader; his works present many phases of truth, each with a scope large enough to fill a contemplative mind. Whatever you seek in him you will surely discover, provided you seek truth. There is no exhausting the various interpretations of his symbols, and a thousand years hence a world of new readers will possess a whole library of new books, as we ourselves do, in these volumes old already.

When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.

Poichè il destino e gli eventi li avevano tenuti per tanto tempo separati, occorrevva che qualche cosa di lieve e come indifferente corresse avanti ad aprire le porte dell'anima a parole più gravi, suggerite da più gravi pensieri.

Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and till Doomsday

in our day, the very A B C has become a science greatly too abstruse to be any longer taught by pointing a pin from letter to letter.