Top 500 Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes (2026 Update)
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451. “Miserable!” exclaimed Rappaccini. “What mean you, foolish girl? Dost thou deem it misery to be endowed with marvellous gifts against which no power nor strength could avail an enemy – misery, to be able to quell the mightiest with a breath – misery, to be as terrible as thou art beautiful? Wouldst thou, then, have preferred the condition of a weak woman, exposed to all evil and capable of none?”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

452. “When men seek only to be trampled upon, it were a pity to deny them a favor so easily granted – and so well deserved!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

453. “The experiment, so far as its original projectors were concerned, proved, long ago, a failure; first lapsing into Fourierism, and dying, as it well deserved, for this infidelity to its own higher spirit. Where.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

455. “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

456. “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

457. “Mine was the first wrong, when I betrayed thy budding youth into a false and unnatural relation with my decay.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

458. “She might, in one of her phases, have been a prophetess.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

459. “They stopped on the bridge to look into the swift eddying flow of the yellow Tiber, a mud puddle in strenuous motion;.”

— 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. “Her simple, careless, childish flow of spirits often made me sad. She seemed to me like a butterfly at play in a flickering bit of sunshine, and mistaking it for broad and eternal summer. We sometimes hold mirth to stricter accountability than sorrow; it must show good cause, or the echo of its laughter comes back drearily.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

462. “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

463. “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

464. “You, Sir, of all men whom I have known, are he whose body is the closest conjoined, and imbued, and identified, so to speak, with the spirit whereof it is the instrument.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

466. “No longer ago than this morning, I was old. I remember looking in the glass, and wondering at my own gray hair, and the wrinkles, many and deep, right across my brow, and the furrows down my cheeks, and the prodigious trampling of crow’s feet about my temples! It was too soon! I could not bear it! Age had no right to come! I had not lived!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

467. “They are unavoidable at this moment, standing, as you do, on the outer verge of your long seclusion, and peopling the world with ugly shapes, which you will soon find to be as unreal as the giants and ogres of a child’s story-book. I find nothing so singular in life, as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it. So it will be with what you think so terrible.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

468. “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

469. “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

470. “After exhausting life in his efforts for mankind is spiritual good, he had made the manner of his death a parable, in order to impress on his admirers the mighty and mournful lesson, that, in the view of infinite Purity, we are sinners all alike.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

471. “It was strange to see that the good shrank not from the wicked, nor were the sinners abashed by the saints.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

472. “A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments...”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

473. “She shuddered to believe, yet could not help believing, that it gave her a sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in other hearts.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

474. “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

475. “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

476. “It seemed to me – the reader may smile, but must not doubt my word – it seemed to me, then, that I experienced a sensation not altogether physical, yet almost so, as of burning heat, and as if the letter were not of red cloth, but red-hot iron. I shuddered, and involuntarily let it fall upon the floor.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

477. “Alone in the world, cast off by it, and with this sole treasure to keep her heart alive, she felt that she possessed indefeasible rights against the world, and was ready to defend them to the death.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

478. “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

479. “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

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

481. “Indeed, the same dark question often rose into her mind with reference to the whole race of womanhood. Was existence worth accepting, even to the happiest among them?”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

484. “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

485. “Air that had not been breathed once and again! air that had not been spoken into words of falsehood, formality, and error, like all the air of the dusky city!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

486. “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

487. “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

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

489. “More than once, he had cleared his throat, and drawn in the long, deep, and tremulous breath, which, when sent forth again, would come burdened with the black secret of his soul.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

490. “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

491. “Jollity and gloom were contending for an empire.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

492. “She seeks to place herself above the sympathies of our common nature, which envelopes all human souls. See if that nature do not assert its claim over her in some mode that shall bring her level with the lowest!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

493. “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

494. “The momentary circumstance was too strong for him; he failed to look beyond the shadow scope of time, and, living once for all eternity, to find the perfect future in the present.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

495. “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

496. “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

497. “He was too calm and cool an observer. Phoebe felt his eye, often; his heart, seldom or never.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

499. “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

500. “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