Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

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

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• 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 it be obeyed.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Sunlight is painting.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• 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.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Moonlight is sculpture.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• 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

• 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.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you’ve scowled upon.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a love-born of Gods care for every need.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Topics in God

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

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Topics in Death

• You are the only person in the world that was ever necessary to me.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

  Topics in Love

• What other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

• Time flies over us, but leaves it shadow behind.

  Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne (64)

Birth:	4th July, 1804
Death:	19th May, 1864
Nationality:	American
Profession:	Novelist, Writer

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