"There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about."
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Nathaniel Hawthorne quotes (page 14 of 15)
298 quotes — follow a thought to its full quote page.
"We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point."
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"There can be...no power...to disclose...the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them until the day when all hidden things be revealed."
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"Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!"
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"A screen... the scenery and the figures of life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribably difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more attractive than the original."
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"The love of science to rival the love of woman, in its depth and absorbing energy."
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"As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers."
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"Keep the imagination sane--that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven."
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"What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!"
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"There is no greater bugbear than a strong willed relative in the circle of his own connections."
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"How is it possible to sayan unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world!"
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"If we would know what heaven is before we come thither, let us retire into the depths of our own spirits, and we shall find it there among holy thoughts and feelings."
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"The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life."
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"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."
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"The best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death."
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"My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream."
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"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."
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"It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued."
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"Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam."
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"Let us acknowledge it wiser, if not more sagacious to follow out one's day-dream to its natural consummation, although if the vision has been worth the having, it is certain never to be consummated otherwise than by a failure."
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