“What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!”
Source: The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Ch. XI : The Arched Window
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Nathaniel Hawthorne 128
American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879) 1804–1864Related quotes
Chronicle "Interdit aux hommes" (Forbidden to men), by Doris Veillette-Hamel, Journal Le Nouvelliste, December 8, 1973, page 19.
Chronicle "Forbidden to men", 1973
“That’s what existence means: draining one’s own self dry without the sense of thirst.”
“One gets so used to one's own horrors, one forgets how they must seem to other people.”
Source: The Thirteenth Tale
“The heart of another is a dark forest, always, no matter how close it has been to one's own.”
Book I, Ch. 8
The Professor's House (1925)
Academy of Achievement interview (1991)
Context: The idea of being constructive, creative, positive, in trying to bring out the best in one's own self and the best in others follows from what I've just been saying. Again, I repeat my belief in us, in ourselves, as the product of the process of evolution, and part of the process itself. I think of evolution as an error-making and error-correcting process, and we are constantly learning from experience. It's the need to dedicate one's self in that way, to one's own self, and to choose an activity or life that is of value not only to yourself but to others as well.