“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.”
"The Maypole of Merry Mount" (1836) from Twice-Told Tales (1837, 1851)
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Nathaniel Hawthorne 128
American novelist and short story writer (1804 – 1879) 1804–1864Related quotes

This quotation is not known to exist in Plato's writings. It apparently first appeared as a quotation attributed to Plato in The Pleasures of Life, Part II by Sir John Lubbock (Macmillan and Company, London and New York), published in 1889.
Misattributed

“And moody madness laughing wild
Amid severest woe.”
St. 8
Ode on a Distant Prospect of Eton College http://www.thomasgray.org/cgi-bin/display.cgi?text=odec (written 1742–1750)

“The world was sad, the garden was a wild,
And man the hermit sigh'd — till woman smiled.”
Part II, line 37
Pleasures of Hope (1799)

Source: Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), P. 56.

"Wild Things" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=De30ET0dQpQ, Know-It-All (2015), New York: Def Jam Recordings

No. 381 (17 May 1712).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

Balder the Beautiful (1877)
Context: Along the melting shores of earth
An emerald flame there ran,
Forest and field grew bright, and mirth
Gladdened the flocks of man. Then glory grew on earth and heaven,
Full glory of full day!
Then the bright rainbow's colours seven
On every iceberg lay!In Balder's hand Christ placed His own,
And it was golden weather,
And on that berg as on a throne
The Brethren stood together!And countless voices far and wide
Sang sweet beneath the sky —
"All that is beautiful shall abide,
All that is base shall die.".