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c242d4a
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Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,--call it which you will,--is a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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53d9175
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Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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ac58458
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How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and evenly coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate!
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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37554e5
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In this republican country, amid the fluctuating waves of our social life, somebody is always at the drowning-point.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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e5dd8ef
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Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.
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women
sewing
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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da72bac
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But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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f4c4d6a
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Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
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irony
trust
mistrust
enemy
friend
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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86ac786
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I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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c1ff872
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Be it sin or no, I hate the man!
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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091c6fa
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There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of anything, to fling himself down at the root of the nearest tree, and lie there passive for evermore. The leaves might bestrew him, and the soil gradually accumulate and form a little hillock over his frame, no matter whether there were life in it or no. Death was too definite a..
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depression
sorrow
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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b00c2eb
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Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.
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relationships
intellectualism
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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b13cc9d
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Or--but this more rarely happened--she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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3e58650
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It was one of those moments--which sometimes occur only at the interval of years--when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.
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self-awareness
self
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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57b114c
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A forced smile is uglier than a frown.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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31eb280
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If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more. The latter is perhaps the truest theory.
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love
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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4e0fad4
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such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.
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sin
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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cb125d6
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Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.
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human
sin
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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7e8b0cc
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What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the dark night-time, he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But here in the sunny d..
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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d222506
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The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds--the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave a broad roar around the traveler, as if all Nature were laughing him to scorn. But he was himself the chief horror of the scene, and shrank not from its other horrors.
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nature
forest
horror
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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4403767
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By all appreciable signs, they loved; 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 by the way; they had even spoken love, in those gushes of passion when their spirits darted forth in articulated breath, like tongues of long-hidden flame; and yet there had been no seal of lips, no clasp of hands, nor any slightest caress, such..
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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36c3da2
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Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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b6cd244
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To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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7495d81
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To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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b05ec2f
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We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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7e208a5
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Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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3acd0dd
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His stories are good to hear at night, because we can dream about them asleep; and good in the morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. (Cowslip)
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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5bddf32
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The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they are compelled to inhale the poison of their own breath, in infinite repetition.
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self-talk
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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c1726b6
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Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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3efb980
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I sometimes fancy," said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene always made a strong impression, "that Rome--mere Rome--will crowd everything else out of my heart."
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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ac2bc71
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The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,--stern and wild ones,--and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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580d2a0
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It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically consid..
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love
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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0996b42
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Technologies of easy travel "give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense..
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travel
possessions
technology
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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c58b4f9
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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.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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4b874f2
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A dead man sits on all our judgment seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men's books! We laugh a dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men's pathos!
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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bb6d720
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The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!
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guilty-conscience
vulnerability
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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cba24c5
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The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one.
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subconscious
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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1054299
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To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be merged into the great, obscure mass of humanity, and forget all about its ancestors.
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family
assimilation
ancestors
heritage
family-line
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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986b705
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It was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.
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otherness
unique
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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8356ccf
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Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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b70bb1d
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The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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e3ce93a
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I have not lived, but only dreamed about living.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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92c0b1b
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She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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61c82e8
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I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |
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f6e0676
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A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne |