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In heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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. Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
Amid the seeming confusion of our mysterious world, individuals are so nicely adjusted to a system, and systems to one another and to a whole, that, by stepping aside for a moment, a man exposes himself to a fearful risk of losing his place forever.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
In a word, the heavy weight upon his spirits kept everything in order, not merely within his own system, but wheresoever the iron accents of the church clock were audible.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
I seriously wished-selfish as it may appear-that the reformation of society had been postponed about half a century, or, at all events, to such a date as should have put my intermeddling with it entirely out of the question.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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 -
I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
The young have less charity for aged follies than the old for those of youth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
I have not lived, but only dreamed about living.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one - none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance - to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
When the Artist rises high enough to achieve the Beautiful, the symbol by which he makes it perceptible to mortal senses becomes of little value in his eyes, while his spirit possesses itself in the enjoyment of the reality.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.
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 -
The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written; if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
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 -
You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
God will give him blood to drink!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Easy reading is damn hard writing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
It is a suggestive idea to track those worn feet backward through all the paths they have trodden ever since they were the tender and rosy little feet of a baby, and (cold as they now are) were kept warm in his mother's hand.
Nathaniel Hawthorne -
It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not that they gape so long and wide-but so quickly close again!
Nathaniel Hawthorne