Top 500 Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes (2024 Update)
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451. “I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

452. “Drink it! It may be less soothing than a sinless conscience. That I cannot give thee. But it will calm the swell and heaving of thy passion, like oil thrown on the waves of a tempestuous sea.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

453. “The minister felt for the child’s other hand, and took it. The moment that he did so, there came what seemed a tumultuous rush of new life, other life than his own, pouring like a torrent into his heart, and hurrying through all his veins, as if the mother and the child were communicating their vital warmth to his half-torpid system. The three formed an electric chain.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

454. “Thus the world assumed another and a better aspect from the hour that the poet blessed it with his happy eyes. The Creator had bestowed him, as the last best touch to his own handiwork. Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

455. “There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature – whatever be the delinquencies of the individual – no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame; as it was the essence of this punishment to do.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

456. “At last, after creeping as it were, for such a length of time along the utmost verge of the opaque puddle of obscurity, they had taken that downright plunge, which, sooner or later, is the destiny of all families, whether princely or plebian.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

457. “But, to tell you my private mind, Signor Giovanni, he should receive little credit for such instances of success – they being probably the work of chance – but should be held strictly accountable for his failures, which may justly be considered his own work.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

458. “Lost as my own soul is, I would still do what I may die other human souls!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

459. “To this last apothegm poor Hepzibah responded with a sigh so deep and heavy that it almost rustled Uncle Venner quite away, like a withered leaf, – as he was, – before an autumnal gale. Recovering himself, however, he bent forward, and, with a good deal of feeling in his ancient visage, beckoned her nearer to him.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

460. “It depresses me to look at old frescos,” responded the Count; “it is a pain, yet not enough of a pain to answer as a penance.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

461. “Men of uncommon intellect who have grown morbid, possess this occasional power of mighty effort, into which they throw the life of many days and then are lifeless for as many more.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

462. “It would break her dear little heart; and I’d rather break my own!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

463. “I have thought of death,” said she – “have wished for it – would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for anything.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

464. “Here was the iron link of mutual crime, which neither he nor she could break. Like all other ties, it brought along with it its obligations.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

465. “Whenever any subject so forcibly affects the mind, time is well spent in thinking of it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

466. “Tell him he has murdered me! Tell him that I’ll haunt him!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

467. “But I never considered it as other than a transitory life.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

468. “But the brook, in the course of its little lifetime among the forest-trees, had gone through so solemn an experience that it could not help talking about it, and seemed to have nothing else to say.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

469. “It had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

470. “This outward mutability indicated, and did not more than fairly express, the various properties of her inner life.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

471. “It is odd enough that the kind of labor which falls to the lot of women is just that which chiefly distinguishes artificial life – the life of degenerated mortals – from the life of Paradise. Eve had no dinner-pot, and no clothes to mend, and no washing-day.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

472. “The preposterous obstinacy of these honest people in persisting to groan and stumble along the difficult pathway rather than take advantage of modern improvements, excited great mirth among our wiser brotherhood.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

473. “A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

474. “Heaven would show mercy,” rejoined Hester, “hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

475. “Life had never brought them a gloomier hour; it was the point whither their pathway had so long been tending, and darkening ever, as it stole along; – and yet it enclosed a charm that made them linger upon it, and claim another, and another, and, after all, another moment.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

476. “Mindful, however, of her own errors and misfortunes, she early sought to impose a tender, but strict control over the infant immortality that was committed to her charge. But the task was beyond her skill.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

477. “The scarlet letter had not done its office.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

478. “If it be a sign of mourning,” replied Mr. Hooper, “I, perhaps, like most other mortals, have sorrows dark enough to be typified by a black veil.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

479. “It was not love, although her rich beauty was a madness to him; nor horror, even while he fancied her spirit to be imbued with the same baneful essence that seemed to pervade her physical frame; but a wild offspring of both love and horror that had each parent in it, and burned like one and shivered like the other.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

480. “In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world’s improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime;.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

481. “Therefore, if we built splendid castles, and pictured beautiful scenes, among the fervid coals of the hearth around which we were clustering, and if all went to rack with the crumbling embers, and have never since arisen out of the ashes, let us take to ourselves no shame. In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world’s improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

482. “Brooding over all these matters, the mother felt like one who has evoked a spirit, but, by some irregularity in the process of conjuration, has failed to win the master-word that should control this new and incomprehensible intelligence.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

483. “The girl waved her hand to Hepzibah and Clifford, and went up the street; a religion in herself, warm, simple, true, with a substance that could walk on earth, and a spirit that was capable of heaven.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

484. “And wise Uncle Venner, passing slowly from the ruinous porch, seemed to hear a strain of music, and fancied that sweet Alice Pyncheon-after witnessing these deeds, this bygone woe and this present happiness, of her kindred mortals-had given one farewell touch of a spirit’s joy upon her harpsichord, as she floated heavenward from the House of the Seven Gables.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

485. “Possibly, it was an instinctive device of her spirit to relieve itself by the exhibition of these phantasmagoric forms from the cruel weight and hardness of the reality.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

486. “Burlacul se simte-ntotdeauna tras pe sfoara cand stie, sau banuieste, ca vreuna din femeile pe care le cunoaste s-a deconspirat singura.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

487. “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.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

488. “The sympathies of these two men instructed them with a profounder sense than either could have attained alone. Their minds accorded into one strain, and made delightful music which neither of them could have claimed as all his own, nor distinguished his own share from the other’s. They led one another, as it were, into a high pavilion of their thoughts, so remote, and hitherto so dim, that they had never entered it before, and so beautiful that they desired to be there always.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

489. “A little parallelogram of sky was all that she had hitherto known of nature, so that she felt the awfulness that really exists in its limitless extent.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

490. “Then, it is true, the prosperity of human nature to tell the very worst of itself, when embodied in the person of another, would constrain them to whisper the black scandal of bygone years.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

491. “Nevertheless, in spite of all these professional grudges, artists are conscious of a social warmth from each other’s presence and contiguity. They shiver at the remembrance of their lonely studios in the unsympathizing cities of their native land. For the sake of such brotherhood as they can find, more than for any good that they get from galleries, they linger year after year in Italy, while their originality dies out of them, or is polished away as a barbarism.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

492. “Imagination, by casting certain circumstances judicially into the shade, may see much to admire.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

493. “The devoted sister had solemn thoughts of thrumming on its chords for Clifford’s benefit, and accompanying the performance with her voice. Poor Clifford! Poor Hepzibah! Poor harpsichord!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

494. “Yes! – these were her realities – all else had vanished!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

495. “They little guessed what deadly purport lurked in those self-condemning words.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

496. “There was a sense within her, – too ill-defined to be made a thought, but weighing heavily on her mind, – that her whole orb of life, both before and after, was connected with this spot, as with the one plant that gave it unity.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

497. “Mother and daughter stood together in the same circle of seclusion from human society;.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

498. “Your fantastic anticipations make me discern all the more forcibly what a wretched, unsubstantial scheme is this, on which we have wasted a precious summer of our lives. Do you seriously imagine that any such realities as you, and many others here, have dreamed of, will ever be brought to pass?”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

499. “A trait si-a iubit si asta face si acum! In trandafirul asta de-o frumusete perfecta nu mai e nici o petala nedeschisa, nici o picatura de roua pe care n-au vazut-o razele soarelui.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

500. “Writers of society, whose new works glow like the rich texture of a just-woven carpet, must be content to relinquish their charm, for every reader, after an age or two.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne