Men and women, and children, too, are such strange creatures, that one never can be certain that he really knows them
 Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of the Seven Gables (1851). copy citation

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Author Nathaniel Hawthorne
Source House of the Seven Gables
Topic women
Date 1851
Language English
Reference
Note
Weblink http://www.gutenberg.org/files/77/77-h/77-h.htm

Context

“answered Holgrave with a smile. "Only this is such an odd and incomprehensible world! The more I look at it, the more it puzzles me, and I begin to suspect that a man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom. Men and women, and children, too, are such strange creatures, that one never can be certain that he really knows them; nor ever guess what they have been from what he sees them to be now. Judge Pyncheon! Clifford! What a complex riddle—a complexity of complexities—do they present! It requires intuitive sympathy, like a young girl's, to solve it.” source