"If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom."
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Nathaniel Hawthorne quotes (page 11 of 15)
298 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"As the architecture of a country always follows the earliest structures, American architecture should be a refinement of the log-house. The Egyptian is so of the cavern and the mound; the Chinese, of the tent; the Gothic, of overarching trees; the Greek, of a cabin."
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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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"Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works."
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"Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible."
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"When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude."
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"It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself."
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"The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of men."
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"No, my little Pearl! Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee."
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"Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession."
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"But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself."
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"Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day."
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"Women are safer in perilous situations and emergencies than men, and might be still more so if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry of manhood."
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"When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived."
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"Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale."
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"We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously."
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"Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?"
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"The divine chemistry works in the subsoil."
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"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."
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"The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us."
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