110+ Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes On Nature, Family And Writing

Nathaniel Hawthorne was an American novelist and short story writer of the Romantic era. He is best known for his works "The Scarlet Letter" and "The House of Seven Gables". Hawthorne's works often focus on history, morality, and religion, and he was one of the major authors of the American Renaissance. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne on nature, love, family.

Top 10 Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

1. 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.
2. 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.
3. Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.
4. 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.
5. 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.
6. The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.
7. Moonlight is sculpture.
8. 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.
9. 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.
10. When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Short Quotes

• Let the black flower blossom as it may!
• If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another.
• Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.
• Happiness is like a butterfly.
• A man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.
• Men of cold passions have quick eyes.
• A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
• She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.
• A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.
• She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About Nature

There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil. My children have had other birthplaces, and, so far as their fortunes may be within my control, shall strike their roots into unaccustomed earth. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I have come to see the nonsense of attempting to describe fine scenery. There is no such possibility. If scenery could be adequately reproduced in words, there would have been no need of God's making it in reality. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Language,-human language,-after all is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances of brute nature,-sometimes not so adequate. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About Love

What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I cannot endure to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; --neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About Writing

Easy reading is damn hard writing. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About Words

Nothing is more unaccountable than the spell that often lurks in a spoken word. A thought may be present to the mind, and two minds conscious of the same thought, but as long as it remains unspoken their familiar talk flows quietly over the hidden idea. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance; and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! . . . Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

How is it possible to sayan unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About World

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

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. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The trees reflected in the river - they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Thus we see, too, in the world that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautiful results--the fragrance of celestial flowers--to the daily life of others. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

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

Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams; but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream — 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

The world, that grey-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About Heart

If mankind were all intellect, they would be continually changing, so that one age would be entirely unlike another. The great conservative is the heart, which remains the same in all ages; so that commonplaces of a thousand years' standing are as effective as ever. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I want nothing to do with politicians. Their hearts wither away, and die out of their bodies. Their consciences are turned to india-rubber, or to some substance as black as that, and which will stretch as much. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life; but circumstances may rouse it to activity. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh it was. My very heart leapt with the sound. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

An unhappy gentleman, resolving to wed nothing short of perfection, keeps his heart and hand till both get so old and withered that no tolerable woman will accept them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart What jailer so inexorable as one's self — Nathaniel Hawthorne

We are but shadows: we are, not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream,--till the heart be touched. That touch creates us--then we begin to be--thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About Life

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

Sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp of autumn. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is a little remarkable, that - though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends - an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life figures itself to me as a festal or funereal procession. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

At no time are people so sedulously careful to keep their trifling appointments, attend to their ordinary occupations, and thus put a commonplace aspect on life, as when conscious of some secret that if suspected would make them look monstrous in the general eye. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A screen... the scenery and the figures of life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribably difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more attractive than the original. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes About Health

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

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

This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phoebe. The old house [with dry rot in its structure and perhaps also in its inhabitants];...it was not good to breathe no other atmosphere that that. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nathaniel Hawthorne Famous Quotes And Sayings

To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The breath of peace was fanning her glorious brow, her head was bowed a very little forward, and a tress, escaping from its bonds, fell by the side of her pure white temple, and close to her just opened lips; it hung there motionless! no breath disturbed its repose! She slept as an angel might sleep, having accomplished the mission of her God. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrow, and uses fire-arms -- a pistol -- perhaps a revolver. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The marble keeps merely a cold and sad memory of a man who would else be forgotten. No man who needs a monument ever ought to have one. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your Shame. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A vast deal of human sympathy runs along the electric line of needlework, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humble seamstress. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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 it be obeyed. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sunlight is painting. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Generosity is the flower of justice. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Nobody will use other people's experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

He whose genius appears deepest and truest excels his fellows in nothing save the knack of expression; he throws out occasionally a lucky hint at truths of which every human soul is profoundly though unutterably conscious. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

But she named the infant "Pearl," as being of great price-purchased with all she had-her mother's only treasure! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ugliness without tact is horrible. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one's self a fool. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness, within those precincts, and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

If human love hath power to penetrate the veil--and hath it not?--then there are yet living here a few who have the blessedness of knowing that an angel loves them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

If we take the freedom to put a friend under our microscope, we thereby insulate him from many of his true relations, magnify his peculiarities, inevitably tear him into parts, and, of course, patch him very clumsily together again. What wonder, then, should we be frightened by the aspect of a monster. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

If cities were built by the sound of music, then some edifices would appear to be constructed by grave, solemn tones,--others to have danced forth to light fantastic airs. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Genius, indeed, melts many ages into one, and thus effects something permanent, yet still with a similarity of office to that of the more ephemeral writer. A work of genius is but the newspaper of a century, or perchance of a hundred centuries. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Some illusions...are the shadows of great truths. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Before this ugly edifice, and between it and the wheel-track of the street, was a grass-plot, much overgrown with burdock, pig-weed, apple-pern, and such unsightly vegetation, which evidently found something congenial in the soil that had so early borne the black flower of civilized society, a prison. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Every crime destroys more Edens than our own — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. Life 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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart. They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Death is so genuine a fact that it excludes falsehoods, or betrays its emptiness; it is a touchstone that proves the gold, and dishonors the baser metal. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Such has often been my apathy, when objects long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Life Lessons by Nathaniel Hawthorne

1. Nathaniel Hawthorne emphasizes the importance of understanding the consequences of our actions and the power of redemption. He encourages us to take responsibility for our mistakes and to strive for self-improvement.
2. Hawthorne also reminds us to be mindful of the impact our decisions can have on others and to be aware of the potential for hypocrisy in our lives.
3. Finally, Hawthorne encourages us to strive for self-awareness and to be honest with ourselves and with others in order to live a more meaningful and fulfilling life.