Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864)
19th-century American novelist and short story writer, best-known today for his many short stories and his romance novels The Scarlet Letter, The House of the Seven Gables, The Blithedale Romance, and The Marble Faun.
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.
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.
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.
Easy reading is damn hard writing.
It is curious, how a man may travel along a country road, and yet miss the grandest, or sweetest of prospects, by reason of an intervening hedge, so like all other hedges, as in no way to hint of the wide landscape beyond. So has it been with me concerning the enchanting landscape in the soul of this Hawthorne, this most excellent Man of Mosses.
Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
Let the black flower blossom as it may!
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.
What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
Life is made up of marble and mud.
Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
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.
Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.
Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.