Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804–64) was an American novelist and short-story writer whose fiction explores guilt, sin, repentance, and moral values.
Born at Salem, Massachusetts, Hawthorne was a descendant of the members of a Puritan family whose ancestors were infamous for their 1692 persecution of the alleged witches of Salem.
Hawthorne’s début novel was Fanshawe (1829.) His short-story collections include Twice-Told Tales (1837) and Mosses from an Old Manse (1846.) His magnum opus is the psychological novel The Scarlet Letter (1850,) a classic inquiry into the nature of American Puritanism and the New England conscience.
Hawthorne’s works include The House of the Seven Gables (1851,) The Blithedale Romance (1852,) The Marble Faun (1860) and the children’s books A Wonder Book (1852) and Tanglewood Tales (1853.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Nathaniel Hawthorne
This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Progress
A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Health
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.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Facts
No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
A man — poet, prophet, or whatever he may be — readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Happiness
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Integrity
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 to be obeyed.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Heroes/Heroism, Heroes
Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Selfishness
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