Top 500 Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes (2025 Update)
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251. “Thus from beneath the black veil there rolled a cloud into the sunshine, an ambiguity of sin or sorrow, which enveloped the poor minister, so that love or sympathy could never reach him.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

252. “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.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

253. “She was patient, – a martyr, indeed, – but she forbore to pray for her enemies; lest, in spite of her forgiving aspirations, the words of the blessing should stubbornly twist themselves into a curse.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

254. “A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you’ve scowled upon.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

255. “There is something more awful in happiness than in sorrow – the latter being earthly and finite, the former composed of the substance and texture of eternity, so that spirits still embodied may well tremble at it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

256. “This above all: be true, be true, be true.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

257. “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.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

258. “Salt is white and pure – there is something holy in salt.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

259. “Man’s own youth is the world’s youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth’s granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

260. “It was one of those moments – which sometimes occur only at the interval of years – when a man’s moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind’s eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

261. “A human spirit may find no insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom House.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

262. “There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

263. “Had they taken her from me, I would willingly have gone with thee into the forest, and signed my name in the Black Man’s book too, and that with mine own blood!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

264. “Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

265. “Still, there will be a connection with the long past – a reference to forgotten events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete – which, if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

266. “Thou, – dost thou pray?” cried Giovanni, still with the same fiendish scorn. “Thy very prayers, as they come from thy lips, taint the atmosphere with death. Yes, yes; let us pray! Let us to church and dip our fingers in the holy water at the portal! They that come after us will perish as by a pestilence! Let us sign crosses in the air! It will be scattering curses abroad in the likeness of holy symbols!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

267. “Just where she had paused, the brook chanced to form a pool so smooth and quiet that it reflected a perfect image of her little figure, with all the brilliant picturesqueness of her beauty, in its adornment of flowers and wreathed foliage... It was strange, the way in which Pearl stood, looking so steadfastly at them through the dim medium of the forest gloom, herself, meanwhile, all glorified with a ray of sunshine...”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

268. “The dell was to be left in solitude among its dark, old trees, which, with their multitudinous tongues, would whisper long of what had passed there, and no mortal be the wiser. And the melancholy brook would add this other tale to the mystery with which its little heart was already overburdened, and whereof it still kept up a murmuring babble, with not a whit more cheerfulness of tone than for ages heretofore.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

269. “You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

270. “The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth’s surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

271. “Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

272. “I know what to think when a young girl shivers by a warm hearth and complains of lonesomeness at her mother’s side. Shall I put these feelings into words?”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

273. “Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But she has no great tenderness, even in her best of moods, and, sooner or later, – oftener sooner than late, – is apt to fling off her nestlings with a scratch of her claw, a dab of her beak, or a rankling wound from her barbed arrows.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

274. “Sunlight is painting.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

275. “An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

276. “My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

277. “Instead of a reprimand for their previous negligence, the case seemed rather to require an eulogium on their praiseworthy caution after the mischief had happened; a grateful recognition of the promptitude of their zeal the moment that there was no longer any remedy.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

278. “Tradition, – which sometimes brings down truth that history has let slip, but is oftener the wild babble of the time, such as was formerly spoken at the fireside and now congeals in newspapers, – tradition is responsible for all contrary averments.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

279. “I never, till now, had a friend who could give me repose; all have disturbed me, and, whether for pleasure or pain, it was still disturbance. But peace overflows from your heart into mine.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

280. “It is very singular how the fact of a man’s death often seems to give people a truer idea of his character, whether for good or evil, than they have ever possessed while he was living and acting among them.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

281. “Such has often been my apathy, when objects long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

282. “If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones, – others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

283. “In short, the almost torpid creatures of my own fancy twitted me with imbecility, and not without fair occasion.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

284. “She has lived and loved! There is no folded petal, no latent dewdrop, in this perfectly developed rose!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

285. “Moonlight is sculpture.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

286. “Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

287. “Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

288. “Hester bade little Pearl run down to the margin of the water, and play with the shells and tangled sea-weed, until she should have talked awhile with yonder gatherer of herbs.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

289. “It is a very genuine admiration, that with which persons too shy or too awkward to take a due part in the bustling world regard the real actors in life’s stirring scenes; so genuine, in fact, that the former are usually fain to make it palatable to their self-love, by assuming that these active and forcible qualities are incompatible with others, which they chose to deem higher and more important.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

290. “How often is it the case that, when impossibilities have come to pass and dreams have condensed their misty substance into tangible realities, we find ourselves calm, and evenly coldly self-possessed, amid circumstances which it would have been a delirium of joy or agony to anticipate!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

291. “What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely-mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

292. “When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart. They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

293. “Keep the imagination sane – that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

294. “The closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

295. “If human love hath power to penetrate the veil – and hath it not? – then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

296. “Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

297. “Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

298. “It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

299. “Be true, be true, be true.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

300. “Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne