Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.

Faith is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows standing without you can see no glory nor can imagine any but standing within every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.

There is so much wretchedness in the world that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance and even should we be deceived still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.

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.

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.

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.

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.

Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.

Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.

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.

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.

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.

A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.

The Christian faith is a grand cathedral with divinely pictured windows.

Moonlight is sculpture.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and it important in some respect whether he chooses to be or not.

There is an alchemy of quiet malice by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.

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

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

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

Sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp of autumn.

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.

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.

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.

You speculate on the luxury of wearing out a whole existence in bed, like an oyster in its shell, content with the sluggish ecstasy of inaction.

How is it possible to say an unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world.

It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow field, just as well as under a pile of money.

You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.

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.

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

We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.

Unquestionably we do stand by our national flag as stoutly as any people in the world and I myself have felt the heart throb at sight of it as sensibly as other men

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

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.

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

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

Time flies over us, but leaves it shadow behind.

The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!

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

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

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.

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

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.

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.

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.

Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.

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

Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.

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

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.

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.

Generosity is the flower of justice.

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air.

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.

Sunlight is painting.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

Life is made up of marble and mud.

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October.