"Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind."
"No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land."
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Source: Nathaniel Hawthorne (1983). “Novels”, p.854, Library of America
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