Nathaniel Hawthorne, (1804-1864), American Novelist, Short Story Writer Quotes

I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness; and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State; -- neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.

The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.

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 recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.

Labor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on 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.

Our most intimate friend is not the one to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

From principles is derived probability, but truth or certainty is obtained only from facts.

Caresses, expressions of one sort or another, are as 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.

Easy reading is damned hard writing.

See! those fiendish lineaments graven on the darkness, the writhed lip of scorn, the mockery of that living eye, the pointed finger, touching the sore place in your heart! Do you remember any act of enormous folly, at which you would blush, even in the remotest cavern of the earth? Then recognize your Shame.