Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne

They had looked love with eyes that conveyed the holy secret from the depths of one soul into the depths of the other, as if it were too sacred to be whispered.

The only unforgivable sin is to look into the human heart without compassion.

My poor, dear, pretty Feathertop! There are thousands upon thousands of coxcombs and charlatans in the world, made up of just such a jumble of wornout, forgotten, and good-for-nothing trash as he was! Yet they live in fair repute, and never see themselves for what they are. And why should my poor puppet be the only one to know himself and perish for it?

Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works. […] A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skillfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.

It may be remarked, however, that, of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.

No encuentro nada tan singular en la vida como el hecho de que todo parece perder su substancia en el instante en que uno va a tocarlo.

The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!

No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.

Men of cold passions have quick eyes.

Moonlight is sculpture.

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

Earth has one angel less, and heaven one more...

We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.

A singular fact, that, when man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.

All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.

Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation.

Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb.

The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.

We go all wrong, by too strenuous a resolution to go all right.

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. A man will commit almost any wrong — he will heap up an immense pile of wickedness, as hard as granite, and which will weigh as heavily upon his soul, to eternal ages — only to build a great, gloomy, dark-chambered mansion, for himself to die in, and for his posterity to be miserable in.

Women are safer in perilous situations and emergencies than men, and might be still more so if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry of manhood.