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Nathaniel Hawthorne quotes

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“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.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“To the untrue man, the whole universe is false,—it is impalpable,—it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“For, what other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, House of the Seven Gables
“Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“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.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Calm, gentle, passionless, as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge than any mortal had ever wreaked upon an enemy.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“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, The Scarlet Letter
“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“There are few uglier traits of human nature than this tendency—which I now witnessed in men no worse than their neighbors—to grow cruel, merely because they possessed the power of inflicting harm.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“A pure hand needs no glove to cover it!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Death was too definite an object to be wished for, or avoided.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvellous 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, The Scarlet Letter
“A woman never overcomes these problems by any exercise of thought. They are not to be solved, or only in one way. If her heart chance to come uppermost, they vanish.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“She had not known the weight, until she felt the freedom!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“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...” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“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...” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Then, moreover, the white locks of age were sometimes found to be the thatch of an intellectual tenement in good repair.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring!” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“It was as if she had been made afresh, out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself, without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“the breach which guilt has once made into the human soul is never, in this mortal state, repaired.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice, when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to...” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates...” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“The besom of reform has swept him out of office; and a worthier successor wears his dignity, and pockets his emoluments.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter
“He needed to bask himself in that smile . . . in order that the chill of so many lonely hours among his books might be taken off the scholar's heart.” Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

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trust heart truth passion love justice women humanity world self enemy grief appearance mask face betrayal calm universe music loneliness

Related sources

The Scarlet Letter (33)
House of the Seven Gables (1)