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Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes
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Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, dark romantic, and short story writer. His works often focus on history, morality, and religion.

He was born in 1804 in Salem, Massachusetts, to Nathaniel Hathorne and the former Elizabeth Clarke Manning. His ancestors include John Hathorne, the only judge involved in the Salem witch trials who never repented of his actions. He entered Bowdoin College in 1821, was elected to Phi Beta Kappa in 1824, and graduated in 1825. He published his first work in 1828, the novel Fanshawe; he later tried to suppress it, feeling that it was not equal to the standard of his later work. He published several short stories in periodicals, which he collected in 1837 as Twice-Told Tales. The next year, he became engaged to Sophia Peabody. He worked at the Boston Custom House and joined Brook Farm, a transcendentalist community, before marrying Peabody in 1842. The couple moved to The Old Manse in Concord, Massachusetts, later moving to Salem, the Berkshires, then to The Wayside in Concord. The Scarlet Letter was published in 1850, followed by a succession of other novels. A political appointment as consul took Hawthorne and family to Europe before their return to Concord in 1860. Hawthorne died on May 19, 1864, and was survived by his wife and their three children.

Much of Hawthorne's writing centers on New England, many works featuring moral metaphors with an anti-Puritan inspiration. His fiction works are considered part of the Romantic movement and, more specifically, dark romanticism. His themes often center on the inherent evil and sin of humanity, and his works often have moral messages and deep psychological complexity. His published works include novels, short stories, and a biography of his college friend Franklin Pierce, the 14th President of the United States. Wikipedia  

✵ 4. July 1804 – 19. May 1864
Nathaniel Hawthorne photo
Nathaniel Hawthorne: 128 quotes17 likes

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

“You are my evil spirit… you and the hard course world!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

as spoken by Owen Warland
"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Maypole of Merry Mount

"The Maypole of Merry Mount" (1836) from Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851)

“There was nothing so antipodal to his nature as this man's cold, unimaginative sagacity, by contact with which everything was converted into a dream except the densest matter of the physical world.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“As if the butterfly, like the artist, were conscious of something not entirely congenial in the child's nature, it alternately sparkled and grew dim. At length it arose from the small hand of the infant with an airy motion that seemed to bear it upward without an effort, as if the ethereal instincts with which its master's spirit had endowed it impelled this fair vision involuntarily to a higher sphere. Had there been no obstruction, it might have soared into the sky and grown immortal. But its lustre gleamed upon the ceiling; the exquisite texture of its wings brushed against that earthly medium; and a sparkle or two, as of stardust, floated downward and lay glimmering on the carpet.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“"Never, never!" whispered she. "What we did had a consecration of its own."”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XVII: The Pastor and His Parishioner

“When the Artist rises high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

As quoted in "Hawthorne and His Mosses" (1851) http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/hahm.html by Herman Melville

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne

December 1853
Notebooks, The English Notebooks (1853 - 1858)

“The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Wedding Knell

"The Wedding Knell" (1837) from Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851)

“Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter IX: The Leech

“Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The House of the Seven Gables

Source: The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Ch. XXI : The Departure

“A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one which you supposed would introduce you to the hidden pearl.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

16 March 1854
Notebooks, The English Notebooks (1853 - 1858)

“The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Twice-Told Tales, Preface http://www.eldritchpress.org/nh/tttpf.html (1851)

“Only get rid altogether of your nonsensical trash about the beautiful, which I nor anybody else, nor yourself to boot, could ever understand,—only free yourself of that, and your success in life is as sure as daylight.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

as spoken by Peter Hovenden
"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“There is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghostlike, the spot where some great and marked event has given the color to their lifetime; and still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter V: Hester at Her Needle

“If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

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

“I seriously wished—selfish as it may appear—that the reformation of society had been postponed about half a century, or, at all events, to such a date as should have put my intermeddling with it entirely out of the question.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Blithedale Romance

The Blithedale Romance (1852)

“In heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“In a word, the heavy weight upon his spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“America is now wholly given over to a d—d mob of scribbling women, and I should have no chance of success while the public taste is occupied with their trash — and should be ashamed of myself if I did succeed. What is the mystery of these innumerable editions of the Lamplighter, and other books neither better nor worse? — worse they could not be, and better they need not be, when they sell by 100,000.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Letter to William D. Ticknor (9 January 1855)

“So long as we love life for itself, we seldom dread the losing it. When we desire life for the attainment of an object, we recognize the frailty of its texture. But, side by side with this sense of insecurity, there is a vital faith in our invulnerability to the shaft of death while engaged in any task that seems assigned by Providence as our proper thing to do, and which the world would have cause to mourn for should we leave it unaccomplished.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

“While the lime-burner was struggling with the horror of these thoughts, Ethan Brand rose from the log, and flung open the door of the kiln. The action was in such accordance with the idea in Bertram's mind, that he almost expected to see the Evil One issue forth, red-hot, from the raging furnace.
Hold! hold!" cried he, with a tremulous attempt to laugh; for he was ashamed of his fears, although they overmastered him. "Don't, for mercy's sake, bring out your Devil now!"
"Man!" sternly replied Ethan Brand, "what need have I of the Devil? I have left him behind me, on my track. It is with such half-way sinners as you that he busies himself. Fear not, because I open the door. I do but act by old custom, and am going to trim your fire, like a lime-burner, as I was once."
He stirred the vast coals, thrust in more wood, and bent forward to gaze into the hollow prison-house of the fire, regardless of the fierce glow that reddened his face. The lime-burner sat watching him, and half suspected this strange guest of a purpose, if not to evoke a fiend, at least to plunge into the flames, and thus vanish from the sight of man. Ethan Brand, however, drew quietly back, and closed the door of the kiln.
"I have looked," said he, "into many a human heart that was seven times hotter with sinful passions than yonder furnace is with fire. But I found not there what I sought. No, not the Unpardonable Sin!"”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

“Life is made up of marble and mud.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The House of the Seven Gables

Source: The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Ch. II : The Little Shop-Window

“Poets have imagined no utterance of fiends or hobgoblins so fearfully appropriate as a laugh. And even the obtuse lime-burner felt his nerves shaken, as this strange man looked inward at his own heart, and burst into laughter that rolled away into the night, and was indistinctly reverberated among the hills.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

p, 125
"Ethan Brand" (1850)

“It contributes greatly towards a man's moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

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

“Scattered… over the breasts of the surrounding mountains there were heaps of hoary mist, in fantastic shapes… or cloud, hovering in the gold radiance of the upper atmosphere. …[I]t seemed almost as if mortal man might thus ascend into the heavenly regions. Earth was so mingled with sky… The great hills played a concert among themselves, each constituting a strain of airy sweetness.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Ethan Brand" (1850)

“God will give him blood to drink!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The House of the Seven Gables

Source: The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Ch. I : The Old Pyncheon Family

“All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

William Cowper Prime in The Old House by the River (1853); first misattributed to Hawthorne in Notable Thoughts about Women: A Literary Mosaic (1882) by Maturin Murray Ballou, p. 239
Misattributed

“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 book Wakefield

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

“If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

January 1854
Notebooks, The English Notebooks (1853 - 1858)

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

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Blithedale Romance

The Blithedale Romance, Chapter 28

“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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“[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)

“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)

“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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“"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)

“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

“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)

“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)

“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)

“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)

“"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)