Inspirational Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne (American Novelist)

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.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Money

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

But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Passion

Life is made up of marble and mud.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Life and Living

Here, dearest Eve,” he exclaims, “here is food.” “Well,” answered she, with the germ of a housewife stirring within her, “we have been so busy to-day that a picked-up dinner must serve
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Eating

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?
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Energy

A woman’s chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Heroes

Man’s own youth is the world’s youth; at least he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth’s granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Youth

It is a good lesson—though it may often be a hard one—for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world’s dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Literature

Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden…. It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Gardening

Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutified.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Labor

I never, till now, had a friend who could give me repose; all have disturbed me, and, whether for pleasure or pain, it was still disturbance. But peace verflows from your heart into mine
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Romance

No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Progress

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Passion

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Affection

When man is a brute, he is the most sensual and loathsome of all brutes.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Man

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

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.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Faith

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
Topics: Writing, Words, Knowledge

It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Laughter

It was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on creating a semblance of a world out of airy matter … This wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus make it a bright transparency … to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me was dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there … These perceptions came too late … I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Authors & Writing

Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Goals

Sunlight is painting.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Painters, Art, Painting

Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne

In the depths of every heart, there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and revelry above may cause us to forget their existence, and the buried ones, or prisoners whom they hide. But sometimes, and oftenest at midnight, those dark receptacles are flung wide open. In an hour like this, when the mind has a passive sensibility, but no active strength; when the imagination is a mirror, imparting vividness to all ideas, without the power of selecting or controlling them; then pray that your grieves may slumber, and the brotherhood of remorse not break their chain.
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Conscience

The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest view
—Nathaniel Hawthorne
Topics: Thoughts

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