Nathaniel Hawthorne: Quotes about heart

"The Old Manse": The Author Makes the Reader Acquainted with His Abode http://www.ibiblio.org/eldritch/nh/tom.html from Mosses from an Old Manse (1846)

Love , Heart

“What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The House of the Seven Gables

Source: The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Ch. XI : The Arched Window

Heart

“The sorrow that lay cold in her mother's heart… converted it into a tomb.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book The Scarlet Letter

Source: The Scarlet Letter

Heart

“Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne book Young Goodman Brown

Source: "Young Goodman Brown"
Context: "Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature could yet mourn for our miserable race. "Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race."

Dreams , Hope , Nature , Evil

“Can the philosopher, big with the inspiration of an idea that is to reform mankind, believe that he is to be beckoned from this sensible existence at the very instant when he is mustering his breath to speak the word of light? Should he perish so, the weary ages must pass away—the world's, whose life sand may fall, drop by drop—before another intellect is prepared to develop the truth that might have been uttered then. But history affords many an example where the most precious spirit… has gone hence… The prophet dies, and the man of torpid heart and sluggish brain lives on. The poet leaves his song half sung, or finishes it, beyond the scope of mortal ears… The painter—as Allston did—leaves half his conception on the canvas to sadden us with its imperfect beauty, and goes to picture forth the whole… in the hues of heaven. But rather such incomplete designs of life will be perfected nowhere. This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects must be taken as proof that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are without value, except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit.”

Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The Artist of the Beautiful" (1844)

Life , Truth , Age , World

“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

Disease , Heart

“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)