Top 500 Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 7 of 10

301. “Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

302. “The influential classes, and those who take upon themselves to be leaders of the people, are fully liable to all the passionate error that has ever characterized the maddest mob.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

303. “His error lay in supposing that this age, more than any past or future one, is destined to see the tattered garments of Antiquity exchanged for a new suit, instead of gradually renewing themselves by patchwork; in applying his own little life span as the measure of an interminable acheivement; and, more than all, in fancying that it mattered anything to the great end in view whether he himself should contend for it or against it.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

304. “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.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

305. “The great scene of grief, in which the wild infant bore a part, had developed all her sympathies; and as her tears fell upon her father’s cheek, they were the pledge that she would grow up amid human joy and sorrow, nor for ever do battle with the world, but be a woman in it. Towards her mother, too, Pearl’s errand as a messenger of anguish was all fulfilled.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

306. “Ever afterwards so touched, and so transfigured.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

307. “The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible one, as such clews generally are. It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

308. “It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

309. “I had neglected to provide myself with books, and as we crept along at the dull rate of four miles per hour, I soon felt the foul fiend Ennui coming upon me.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

310. “A man – poet, prophet, or whatever be may be – readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

311. “Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

312. “It is the surest test of genuine love, that it brings back our early simplicity to the worldliest of us.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

313. “His was the profession at that era in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life; for – leaving a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements powerful enough in the almost worshipping respect of the community, to win the most aspiring ambition into its service. Even political power – as in the case of Increase Mather – was within the grasp of a successful priest.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

314. “Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

315. “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.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

316. “There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings, as now in October. The sunshine is peculiarly genial; and in sheltered places, as on the side of a bank, or of a barn or house, one becomes acquainted and friendly with the sunshine. It seems to be of a kindly and homely nature. And the green grass, strewn with a few withered leaves, looks the more green and beautiful for them.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

317. “Those with whom we can apparently become well acquainted in a few moments are generally the most difficult to rightly know and to understand.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

318. “We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

319. “Oh Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure imagination you hide under that little straw hat!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

320. “The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

321. “Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!” whispered her mother. “We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

322. “There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

323. “I do detest all offices – all, at least, that are held on a political tenure.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

324. “Perhaps a germ of love was springing in their hearts so pure that it might blossom in Paradise, since it could not be matured on earth;.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

325. “He whose genius appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is profoundly though unutterably conscious.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

326. “Ugliness without tact is horrible.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

327. “It appears to me,” said the daguerreotypist, smiling, “that Uncle Venner has the principles of Fourier at the bottom of his wisdom; only they have not quite so much distinctness in his mind as in that of the systematizing Frenchman.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

328. “The best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

329. “A recluse, like Hepzibah, usually displays remarkable frankness, and at least temporary affability, on being absolutely cornered, and brought to the point of personal intercourse; like the angel whom Jacob wrestled with, she is ready to bless you when once overcome.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

330. “It has been delicately wrought,” said the artist, calmly. “As I told you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence – call it magnetism, or what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a few moments more its mechanism would be irreparably injured.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

331. “The present is burthened too much with the past.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

332. “Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or – and the outward semblance is the same – crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

333. “It is a kind of natural magic that enables these favored ones to bring out the hidden capabilities of things around them; and particularly to give a look of comfort and habitableness to any place which, for however brief a period, may happen to be their home.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

334. “But never had their youthful beauty seemed so pure and high, as when its glow was chastened by adversity.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

335. “Again, after a blank moment, there would be a flickering taper-gleam in his eyeballs. It betokened that his spiritual part had returned, and was doing its best to kindle the heart’s household fire, and light up intellectual lamps in the dark and ruinous mansion, where it was doomed to be a forlorn inhabitant.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

336. “Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

337. “He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

338. “She could scarcely forgive him – least of all now, when the heavy footstep of their approaching Fate might be heard, nearer, nearer, nearer! – for being able so completely to withdraw himself from their mutual world – while she groped darkly, and stretched forth her cold hands, and found him not.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

339. “So they lingered an instant longer. No golden light had ever been so precious as the gloom of this dark forest. Here, seen only by his eyes, the scarlet letter need not burn into the bosom of the fallen woman! Here, seen only by her eyes, Arthur Dimmesdale, false to God and man, might be, for one moment, true!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

340. “No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

341. “One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

342. “They stood, as it were, in an utter solitude, which would be made none the less solitary by the densest throng of human life.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

343. “The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

344. “And the higher and purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which godlike benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

345. “Let us choose the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, for Death’s garden ground; and Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

346. “Not yet hardened, many young die good.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

347. “Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

348. “Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

349. “The angel and apostle of the coming revelation must be a woman, indeed, but lofty, pure, and beautiful; and wise, moreover, not through dusky grief, but the ethereal medium of joy; and showing how sacred love should make us happy, by the truest test of a life successful to such an end!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

350. “It was not painful to behold this look; for, though dim, it had not the imbecility of decaying age.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne