Nathaniel Hawthorne: Trending quotes (page 6)

“The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The House of the Seven Gables

Source: The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Ch. XX : The Flower of Eden

Men , World , Happiness

“In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

The Snow-Image, and Other Tales, Preface http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/sipf.html (1852)

Life , Wisdom , Men , Youth

“He knew that the world, and Annie as the representative of the world, whatever praise might be bestowed, could never say the fitting word nor feel the fitting sentiment which should be the perfect recompense of an artist who, symbolizing a lofty moral by a material trifle,—converting what was earthly to spiritual gold,—had won the beautiful into his handiwork. Not at this latest moment was he to learn that the reward of all high performance must be sought within itself, or sought in vain.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

World , Beauty , Feeling , Learning

“In view of my previous weariness of office, and vague thoughts of resignation, 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 book The Scarlet Letter

Introduction: The Custom-House
The Scarlet Letter (1850)

Hope , Idea , Suicide , Personality

“[H]e was now a cold observer, looking on mankind as the subject of his experiment, and, at length, converting man and woman to be his puppets, and pulling the wires that moved them to such degrees of crime as were demanded by his study.
Thus Ethan Brand became a fiend. He began to be so from the moment that his moral nature had ceased to keep the pace of improvement with his intellect.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

p, 125
"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Nature , Study

“Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1853
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

Love , Life , Tree

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Marble Faun

Source: The Marble Faun (1860), Chapter IV: The Spectre of the Catacomb

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

John Jay Chapman, Practical Agitation (1900), ch.7
Misattributed

“The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter I: The Prison Door

Happiness

“Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Wakefield

"Wakefield" (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)

Men , Time

“If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Fanshawe

"Fanshawe" (1828)

Dreams , Reality , Heart

“The marble was all burnt into perfect, snow-white lime. But on its surface, in the midst of the circle,—snow-white too, and thoroughly converted into lime,—lay a human skeleton, in the attitude of a person who, after long toil, lies down to long repose. Within the ribs—strange to say—was the shape of a human heart.
"Was the fellow's heart made of marble?" cried Bertram…
"At any rate, it is burnt into what looks like a special good lime… my kiln is half a bushel the richer for him."…
[T]he rude lime-burner lifted his pole, and, letting it fall upon the skeleton, the relics of Ethan Brand were crumbled into fragments.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

Heart , Personality , Perfection

“What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

1836
Notebooks, The American Notebooks (1835 - 1853)

Solitude

“"What is the Unpardonable Sin?" asked the lime-burner; and then he shrank farther from his companion, trembling lest his question should be answered. "It is a sin that grew within my own breast," replied Ethan Brand, standing erect with a pride that distinguishes all enthusiasts of his stamp. "A sin that grew nowhere else! The sin of an intellect that triumphed over the sense of brotherhood with man and reverence for God, and sacrificed everything to its own mighty claims!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

God , Question , Sense

“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 book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XVIII: A Flood of Sunshine

Women , Solitude , Strong , Teachers

“By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Young Goodman Brown

"Young Goodman Brown" (1835) from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

Heart

“The blacksmith, by main force, unclosed the infant's hand, and found within the palm a small heap of glittering fragments, whence the mystery of beauty had fled forever. …Owen Warland …looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life's labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist rose high enough to achieve the beautiful, the symbol by which he made it perceptible to mortal senses became of little value in his eyes while his spirit possessed itself in the enjoyment of the reality.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Life , Beauty , Reality , Sense

“To persons whose pursuits are insulated from the common business of life—who are either in advance of mankind or apart from it—there often comes a sensation of moral cold that makes the spirit shiver as if it had reached the frozen solitudes around the pole. What the prophet, the poet, the reformer, the criminal, or any other man with human yearnings, but separated from the multitude by a peculiar lot, might feel, poor Owen felt.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Life , Feeling , Business , Solitude

“Somewhat of a babbler, indeed, did people begin to think him; for he was apt to discourse at wearisome length of marvels of mechanism that he had read about… Among them he enumerated the Man of Brass, constructed by Albertus Magnus, and the Brazen Head of Friar Bacon… the automata of a little coach and horses, which it was pretended had been manufactured for the Dauphin of France; together with an insect that buzzed about the ear like a living fly… a duck that waddled, and quacked, and ate… In his idle and dreamy days he had considered it possible… to spiritualize machinery… a beauty that should attain to the ideal which Nature proposed to herself in all her creatures…”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

People , Beauty , Nature , Thinking

“"But is it alive?" exclaimed she again; and the finger on which the gorgeous mystery had alighted was so tremulous that the butterfly was forced to balance himself with his wings. "Tell me if it be alive, or whether you created it. But"—and here his countenance somewhat changed—"this butterfly is not now to me what it was when I beheld it afar off in a daydream of my youth."”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Youth , Change