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HAWTHORNE, Nathaniel Quotes
(1804-1864), American author
If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones, and others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs.
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.
A man—poet, prophet, or whatever he may be—readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.
Nobody will use other people's experience, nor has any of his own till it is too late to use it.
Men of cold passions have quick eyes.
Every day of my life makes me feel more and more how seldom a fact is accurately stated; how almost invariably when a story has passed through the mind of a third person it becomes, so far as regards the impression it makes in further repetitions, little better than a falsehood; and this, too, though the narrator be the most truth-seeking person in existence.
Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows.—Standing without, you can see no glory, nor can imagine any, but standing within every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.
A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.
Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.—Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild goose chase, and is never attained.
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool.—The truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted and when obeyed.
No man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.
Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments—all that concerns him, unreal; so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation.
Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or in age, it has out-lived its privilege of spring time and sprightliness.
When man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.
It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow of the field, just as well as under a pile of money.
No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
Of a bitter satirist—Swift, for instance—it might be said, that the person or thing on which his satire fell shrivelled up as if the devil had spit on it.
What would a man do if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never better himself in cool solitude?
At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Like certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing-day.
Zealots have an idol, to which they consecrate themselves high priests, and deem it holy work to offer sacrifices of whatever is most precious.
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