Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

• What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
• Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
• The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.
• Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.
• Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
• Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.
• Sunlight is painting.
• Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.
• The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and lastly, the solid cash.
• The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
• Time flies over us, but leaves it shadow behind.
• We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
• Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.
• What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a house on - is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.
• Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
• You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.
• Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect whether he chooses to be so or not.
• We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.
• Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.
• 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.
• A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
• A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.
• A woman's chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.
• Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.
• 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.
• Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are necessary to the life of the affections as leaves are to the life of a tree. If they are wholly restrained, love will die at the roots.
• Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
• Easy reading is damn hard writing.
• A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
• In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous 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.
• 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 appreciate.
• Life is made up of marble and mud.
• Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world.
• Moonlight is sculpture.
• Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
• Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
• Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
• Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp but if you sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
• Happiness is a butterfly that when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp. But if you sit down quietly at the table, it may come and land on your shoulder.
• Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it slips away. But if you sit quietly, it may come and rest on your shoulder.
• Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it comes and sits softly on your shoulder.
• Happiness is like a butterfly—chase it, and it flies away. Take time to stand still, and it lands right on your shoulder.
• Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you just sit quietly, it may land upon you.
• Happiness is like a butterfly—chase it, and it will elude you; sit still, and it will land on you.
• Success is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it eludes you; but if you sit quietly, it may come and perch on your shoulder.
• Success is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it slips away. Sit quietly, and it may just land on you.
• Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you will sit still, it will alight upon you.
• Happiness is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it will come and sit softly on your shoulder.
• Success is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you turn your attention to other things, it subtly comes and sits on your shoulder.
• Happiness is like a butterfly—you catch it the moment you stop chasing it.
• Success is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you stand still, it may just alight upon your shoulder.
• Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. But if you sit quietly, it may just settle upon you.
• Happiness is like a butterfly; chase it and it will fly away, but if you sit quietly, it may just land on you.
• Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it escapes you. But if you sit quietly, it may come and sit down on your shoulder.
• Success is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it eludes you. Sit calmly, and it may come to rest upon your shoulder.
• Success is like a butterfly; chase it, and it will elude you. But if you sit quietly, it may alight upon you.
• Happiness is like a butterfly; the more you chase it, the more it will elude you, but if you turn your attention to other things, it comes and sits softly on your shoulder.
• Success is like a butterfly: the more you chase it, the harder it becomes to catch. But if you stand still, it may just alight upon you!