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Nathaniel Hawthorne

103 quotes

• “If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1828 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Fanshawe" (1828)

• “Let us forget the other names of American statesmen, that have been stamped upon these hills, but still call the loftiest — WASHINGTON. Mountains are Earth's undecaying monuments. They must stand while she endures, and never should be consecrated to the mere great men of their own age and country, but to the mighty ones alone, whose glory is universal, and whom all time will render illustrious.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Sketches from Memory": The Notch of the White Mountains (1835)

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

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Wakefield" (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)

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

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Wakefield" (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)

• “Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Wakefield" (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)

• “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, for he is the type of New England's hereditary spirit; and his shadowy march, on the eve of danger, must ever be the pledge, that New England's sons will vindicate their ancestry.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Gray Champion" (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)

• “By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1835 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Young Goodman Brown" (1835) from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

• “Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Maypole of Merry Mount" (1836) from Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851)

• “The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Wedding Knell" (1837) from Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851)

• “I have not lived, but only dreamed about living.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1837 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (4 June 1837)

• “As far as my experience goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in this age, there appears to be a fellow-feeling among them, which had not heretofore been developed. As men, they ask nothing better than to be on equal terms with their fellow-men; and as authors, they have thrown aside their proverbial jealousy, and acknowledge a generous brotherhood.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Hall of Fantasy" (1843) from Mosses from an Old Manse

• “She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1843 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Birthmark" (1843) from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

• “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.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1846 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Old Manse": The Author Makes the Reader Acquainted with His Abode from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

• “The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Twice-Told Tales, Preface (1851)

• “How slowly I have made my way in life! How much is still to be done! How little worth — outwardly speaking — is all that I have achieved! The bubble reputation is as much a bubble in literature as in war, and I should not be one whit the happier if mine were world-wide and time-long than I was when nobody but yourself had faith in me. The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and, lastly, the solid cash.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to Horatio Bridge (15 March 1851)

• “When the Artist rises high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: As quoted in "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1851) by Herman Melville

• “In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1852 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: The Snow-Image, and Other Tales, Preface (1852)

• “America is now wholly given over to a d—d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash — and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the Lamplighter, and other books neither better nor worse? — worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by 100,000.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1855 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: Letter to William D. Ticknor (9 January 1855)

• “Heaven! What have I done?" exclaimed he. "The vapor, the influence of that brute force,—it has bewildered me and obscured my perception. I have made the very stroke—the fatal stroke—that I have dreaded from the first. It is all over—the toil of months, the object of my life. I am ruined!" And there he sat, in strange despair, until his lamp flickered in the socket and left the Artist of the Beautiful in darkness.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Thus it is that ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical. It is requisite for the ideal artist to possess a force of character that seems hardly compatible with its delicacy; he must keep his faith in himself while the incredulous world assails him with its utter disbelief; he must stand up against mankind and be his own sole disciple, both as respects his genius and the objects to which it is directed.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In a word, the heavy weight upon his spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor anybody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand,—only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “There was nothing so antipodal to his nature as this man's cold, unimaginative sagacity, by contact with which everything was converted into a dream except the densest matter of the physical world.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “You are my evil spirit... you and the hard course world!”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Alas that the artist... may not content himself with the inward enjoyment of the beautiful, but must chase the fitting mystery beyond the verge of his ethereal domain, and crush its frail being in seizing it with a material grasp. Owen Warland felt the impulse to give external reality to his ideas as irresistibly as any of the poets or painters who have arrayed the world in a dimmer and fainter beauty, imperfectly copied from the richness of their visions.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “To persons whose pursuits are insulated from the common business of life—who are either in advance of mankind or apart from it—there often comes a sensation of moral cold that makes the spirit shiver as if it had reached the frozen solitudes around the pole. What the prophet, the poet, the reformer, the criminal, or any other man with human yearnings, but separated from the multitude by a peculiar lot, might feel, poor Owen felt.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “So long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of an object, we recognize the frailty of its texture. But, side by side with this sense of insecurity, there is a vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death while engaged in any task that seems assigned by Providence as our proper thing to do, and which the world would have cause to mourn for should we leave it unaccomplished.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “In heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger on which the gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell me if it be alive, or whether you created it. But"—and here his countenance somewhat changed—"this butterfly is not now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off in a daydream of my youth.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “He knew that the world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor feel the fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a material trifle,—converting what was earthly to spiritual gold,—had won the beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest moment was he to learn that the reward of all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed the infant's hand, and found within the palm a small heap of glittering fragments, whence the mystery of beauty had fled forever. ...Owen Warland ...looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. 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.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should be answered. "It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims!”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “[H]e was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded by his study. Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Scattered... over the breasts of the surrounding mountains there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes... or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. ...[I]t seemed almost as if mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky... The great hills played a concert among themselves, each constituting a strain of airy sweetness.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1836

• “We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream: it may be so the moment after death.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1836

• “What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1836 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1836

• “Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1838 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1838

• “I do detest all offices — all, at least, that are held on a political tenure. And I want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1840 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1840

• “I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1842 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1842

• “Words — so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1848 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1848

• “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.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1851 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1851

• “Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 1853

• “Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1853 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: December 1853

• “If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: January 1854

• “A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one which you supposed would introduce you to the hidden pearl.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) first seen 1854 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

  Recorded in: 16 March 1854

• “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.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

• “It is a good lesson — though it may often be a hard one — for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.”

  Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–1864) said by 1864 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source

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