Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist, short story writer and well-known exponent of the genre of dark romance who rose to prominence in the 19th century and was considered among the noted authors of his time. He graduated from Bowdoin College in 1825 but according to his own admission, he was not a keen student. He worked as the editor of the magazine ‘American Magazine of Useful and Entertaining Things’ before taking up a job in the Boston Custom House. His first novel ‘Fanshawe’ was published in 1828 but Hawthorne was not satisfied by his efforts. Hawthorne’s forte when he started off was in short stories and his stories were published in several periodicals of the time. However, his first success as a novelist was with the novel ‘The Scarlet Letter’, published in 1850. His other notable works include ‘The House of the Seven Gables’, ‘The Marble Faun’, ‘The Romance of Monte Beni’, ‘The Blithedale Romance’ and other short story collections. Hawthorne was one of the noted thinkers of his time and his writings, novels, thoughts, short stories and books were very well received by his audience. Excerpts from Nathaniel Hawthorne’s books, short stories, novels and other writings have become popular quotations and are frequently quoted by people. Following is a collection of some famous sayings and quotations by Nathaniel Hawthorne which have been collected from a vast sea of his work.
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 the true.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.
Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house."
[Notebook, Oct. 10, 1842]
She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
To do nothing is the way to be nothing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change; and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.
Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.
It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Moonlight is sculpture.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
No, my little Pearl! Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee.
Love, whether newly born, or aroused frrom a deathlike slumber, must alwasy create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of men.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,—call it which you will,—is a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one
But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.
A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
His stories are good to hear at night, because we can dream about them asleep; and good in the morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. (Cowslip)
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A forced smile is uglier than a frown.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and the revelry above may cause us to forget their existence...
Or—but this more rarely happened—she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it.
...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.
Cannot you conceive that another man may wish well to the world and struggle for its good on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down?
But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I sometimes fancy," said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene always made a strong impression, "that Rome--mere Rome--will crowd everything else out of my heart.
For, what other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A dead man sits on all our judgment seats; and living judges do but search out and repeat his decisions. We read in dead men's books! We laugh a dead men's jokes, and cry at dead men's pathos!
But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart.
...such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him
Is it a fact – or have I dreamt it – that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
Words - so innocent and powerless, as they are standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
America is now wholly given over to a damned mob of scribbling women
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