Nathaniel Hawthorne
Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.Collection: Angel
We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.Collection: Dream
Dream strange things and make them look like truth.Collection: Dream
What we need for our happiness is often close at hand, if we knew but how to seek for it.Collection: Hands
This greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all things-from the right of saying, in every conjuncture, "This, too, will pass away.Collection: Passing Away
It is because the spirit is inestimable, that the lifeless body is so little valued.Collection: Life
I find myself at the extremity of a long beach. How gladly does the spirit leap forth, and suddenly enlarge its sense of being to the full extent of the broad, blue, sunny deep! A greeting and a homage to the Sea! I descend over its margin, and dip my hand into the wave that meets me, and bathe my brow. That far-resounding roar is the Ocean’s voice of welcome. His salt breath brings a blessing along with it.Collection: Beach
Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are never more at home with their own hearts than while so occupied.Collection: Home
As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.Collection: Home
The best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death.Collection: Prison
Let the black flower blossom as it may!Collection: Flower
The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought.Collection: Writing
No fountain so small but that Heaven may be imaged in its bosom.Collection: Heaven
If we would know what heaven is before we come thither, let us retire into the depths of our own spirits, and we shall find it there among holy thoughts and feelings.Collection: Heaven
Technologies of easy travel "give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere,-in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?Collection: Beautiful
Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.Collection: Quality
To be left alone in the wide world with scarcely a friend,--this makes the sadness which, striking its pang into the minds of the young and the affectionate, teaches them too soon to watch and interpret the spirit-signs of their own hearts.Collection: Heart
His stories are good to hear at night, because we can dream about them asleep; and good in the morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. (Cowslip)Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Heart
Keep the imagination sane--that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.Collection: Imagination
She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.Collection: Grief
Death possesses a good deal, of real estate, namely, the graveyard in every town.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Nature
It is my opinion that a man's soul may be buried and perish under a dung-heap, or in a furrow field, just as well as under a pile of money.Collection: Witty
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.Collection: Ideas
Nervous and excitable persons need to talk a great deal, by way of letting off their steam.Collection: Needs
Nobody will use other people's experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it.Collection: People
Accuracy is twin brother to honesty, and inaccuracy to dishonesty.Collection: Brother
Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.Collection: Speak
Salt is white and pure - there is something holy in salt.Collection: Food
The trees reflected in the river - they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we.Collection: Spiritual
Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!Collection: Honesty
The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure - that is the choicest of all.Collection: Inward
Men of cold passions have quick eyes.Collection: Passion
She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.Collection: Grief
Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them.Collection: Jugs
The calmer thought is not always the right thought, just as the distant view is not always the truest viewCollection: Views
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?Collection: Men
We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.Collection: Moderation
Death should take me while I am in the mood.Collection: Death
What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?Collection: Music
Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.Collection: Years
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 dreamCollection: Inspirational
The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.Collection: Past
it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.Collection: Hate
The washing of dishes does seem to me the most absurd and unsatisfactory business that I ever undertook. If, when once washed, they would remain clean for ever and ever (which they ought in all reason to do, considering how much trouble it is), there would be less occasion to grumble; but no sooner is it done, than it requires to be done again. On the whole, I have come to the resolution not to use more than one dish at each meal.Collection: Doe
This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.Collection: People
Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.Collection: Reflection