Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne

All his life long, he had been learning how to be wretched, as one learns a foreign tongue; and now, with the lesson thoroughly at heart, he could with difficulty comprehend his little airy happiness.

The hand of one person may express more than the face of another.

It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.

"Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of its own."

A man's soul may be buried and perish under a dungheap or in a furrow of the field, just as well as under a pile of money.

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.

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.

It is often instructive to take the woman's, the private and domestic view, of a public man; nor can anything be more curious than the vast discrepancy between portraits intended for engraving, and the pencil-sketches that pass from hand to hand, behind the original's back.

The situation of a man in the midst of a crowd, yet as completely in the power of another, life and all, as if they two were in the deepest solitude.

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.

A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.

Happiness is a butterfly which when pursued is just out of grasp... But if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.

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 true.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool the truest heroism is, to resist the doubt and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.

The trees reflected in the river -- they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.

This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart What jailer so inexorable as one's self

A single dream is more powerful than a thousand realities.

We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.