Top 500 Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes (2025 Update)
Page 9 of 10

401. “Providence, in the person of this little girl, had assigned to Hester’s charge the germ and blossom of womanhood, to be cherished and developed amid a host of difficulties.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

402. “Love must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance that it overflows upon the outward world.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

403. “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

404. “Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened! Meddle no more with it! Begin all new!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

405. “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

406. “Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

407. “In all seasons of calamity, indeed, whether general or of individuals, the outcast of society at once found her place. She came, not as a guest, but as a rightful inmate, into the household that was darkened by trouble, as if its gloomy twilight were a medium in which she was entitled to hold intercourse with her fellow-creatures.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

408. “They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

409. “In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanor on the part of the spectators; as befitted a people amongst whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both were so thoroughly interfused, that the mildest and the severest acts of public discipline were alike made venerable and awful. Meagre, indeed, and cold was the sympathy that a transgressor might look for, from such bystanders, at the scaffold.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

410. “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

411. “It was carelessly at first, like a man chiefly accustomed to look inward, and to whom external matters are of little value and import, unless they bear relation to something within his mind.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

412. “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

413. “In giving her existence, a great law had been broken; and the result was a being, whose elements were perhaps beautiful and brilliant, but all in disorder; or with an order peculiar to themselves, amidst which the point of variety and arrangement was difficult or impossible to be discovered.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

415. “The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

416. “I begin to suspect that the man’s bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

417. “Man’s best-directed effort accomplishes a kind of dream, while God is the sole worker of realities.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

418. “It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not that they gape so long and wide – but so quickly close again!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

419. “He had striven to put a cheat upon himself by making the avowal of a guilty conscience, but had gained only one other sin, and a self-acknowledged shame, without the momentary relief of being self-deceived. He had spoken the very truth, and transformed it into the veriest falsehood.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

420. “Whatever else I may repent of, therefore, let it be reckoned neither among my sins nor follies that I once had faith and force enough to form generous hopes of the world’s destiny – yes! – and to do what in me lay for their accomplishment;.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

421. “Not a stitch in that embroidered letter, but she has felt it in her heart.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

422. “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 minds age.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

423. “The links that united her to the rest of human kind – links of flowers, or silk or gold – had all been broken.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

424. “To the untrue man, the whole universe is false.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

425. “Thy acts are like mercy,” said Hester, bewildered and appalled. “But thy words interpret thee as a terror!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

426. “The world’s law was no law for her mind.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

427. “At the other end... was provided a deep and cushioned seat. Here, on the cushion, lay a folio tome, probably of the Chronicles of England, or other such substantial literature; even as, in our own days, we scatter gilded volumes on the centre-table, to be turned over by the casual guest.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

428. “The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

429. “These names of gentleman and lady had a meaning, in the past history of the world, and conferred privileges, desirable, or otherwise, on those entitled to bear them. In the present – and still more in the future condition of society – they imply, not privilege, but restriction.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

430. “Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

431. “Thus it was with the men of rank, on whom their eminent position imposed the guardianship of the public morals.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

432. “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

433. “At almost every step in life, we meet with young men of just about Holgrave’s age, for whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, even after mucha nd careful inquiry, we never happen to hear another word. The effervescence of youth and passion, and the fresh gloss of the intellect and imagination, endow them with a false brilliancy, which makes fools of themselves and other people.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

435. “The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers, – stern and wild ones, – and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

436. “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

437. “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

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

439. “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

440. “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

441. “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

442. “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

443. “It must suffice, that, though my form be absent, my inner man goes constantly to church, while many, whose bodily presence fills the accustomed seats, have left their souls at home.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

444. “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

445. “The moment when a man’s head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. 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

446. “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

447. “They are practised politicians, every man of them, and skilled to adjust those preliminary measures, which steal from the people, without its knowledge, the power of choosing its own rulers.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

448. “Then she was sure of her, and tasted hours of quiet, sad, delicious happiness;.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne

449. “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

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

— Nathaniel Hawthorne