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.Collection: Needs
Generosity is the flower of justice.Collection: Inspirational
What a happy and holy fashion it is that those who love one another should rest on the same pillow.Collection: Love
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.Collection: Fall
Cupid in these latter times has probably laid aside his bow and arrow, and uses fire-arms -- a pistol -- perhaps a revolver.Collection: Fire
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may going to prove one's self a fool.Collection: Hero
Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need.Collection: Needs
Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb.Collection: Book
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!Collection: Heart
Do anything, save to lie down and die!Collection: Lying
Happiness is like a butterfly - the more you chase, the more subtle, but if you stop moving and quietly wait for it to land on you.Collection: Moving
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.Collection: Faith
I used to visit and revisit it a dozen times a day, and stand in deep contemplation over my vegetable progeny with a love that nobody could share or conceive of who had never taken part in the process of creation. It was one of the most bewitching sights in the world to observe a hill of beans thrusting aside the soil, or a rose of early peas just peeping forth sufficiently to trace a line of delicate green.Collection: Summer
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.Collection: Memories
It was a day in early spring; and as that sweet, genial time of year and atmosphere calls out tender greenness from the ground,--beautiful flowers, or leaves that look beautiful because so long unseen under the snow and decay,--so the pleasant air and warmth had called out three young people, who sat on a sunny hill-side enjoying the warm day and one another.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Heart
Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.Collection: People
Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, or—and the outward semblance is the same—crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.Collection: Heart
I wish I had the gift of making rhymes, for methinks there is poetry in my head and heart since I have been in love with you.Collection: Love
Let the attempt be made, at whatever risk.Collection: Risk
I find nothing so singular to life as that everything appears to lose its substance the instant one actually grapples with it.Collection: Substance
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.Collection: Spiritual
A grave, wherever found, preaches a short and pithy sermon to the soul.Collection: Soul
...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Destiny
Sunlight is like the breath of life to the pomp of autumn.Collection: Autumn
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.Collection: Clouds
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.Collection: Men
She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.Collection: Music
Ugliness without tact is horrible.Collection: Horrible
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.Collection: Heart
Many writers lay very great stress upon some definite moral purpose, at which they profess to aim their works.Collection: Stress
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.Collection: Nature
Writing can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.Collection: Reading
My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.Collection: Dream
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.Collection: Death
Not yet hardened, many young die good.Collection: Young
London is like the grave in one respect -- any man can make himself at home there; and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better either die or go to London.Collection: Home
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.Collection: Children
We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment good in itself, is not good to do religiously.Collection: Holiness
Who can tell where happiness may come, or where, though an expected guest, it may never show its face?Collection: Happiness
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.Collection: Men
Every crime destroys more Edens than our ownCollection: Eden
Such has often been my apathy, when objects long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach.Collection: Long
Women are safer in perilous situations and emergencies than men, and might be still more so if they trusted themselves more confidingly to the chivalry of manhood.Collection: Trust
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.Collection: Friends
Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day.Collection: Men
A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats. You may strip off the outer ones without doing much mischief, perhaps none at all ; but you keep taking off one after another, in expectation of coming to the inner nucleus, including the whole value of the matter. It proves, however, that there is no such nucleus, and that chastity is diffused through the whole series of coats, is lessened with the removal of each, and vanishes with the final one which you supposed would introduce you to the hidden pearl.Collection: Expectations
Can man be so age-stricken that no faintest sunshine of his youth may re visit him once a year? It is impossible. The moss on our time-worn mansion brightens into beauty; and the good old pastor, who once dwelt here, renewed his prime and regained his boyhood in the genial breeze of his ninetieth spring. Alas for the worn and heavy soul, if, whether in youth or age, it has outlived its privilege of springtime sprightliness!Collection: Spring