Quotes & Sayings About Hawthorne

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There are few things, - whether in the outward world, or to a certain depth, in the invisible sphere of thought, - few things hidden from the man who devotes himself earnestly and unreservedly to the solution of a mystery. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'll never forget reading Chekhov's "A Doctor's Visit" on a train to Hawthorne, New York, and I got to the end - the scene where the patient says goodbye to the doctor and she puts a flower in her hair as a kind of thank you to him - and I felt like a cowboy shot from a canyon's top. This is a different experience from reading a novel, I think. The emotional effect is cumulative. Let's just hope market forces don't send short fiction the way of the dinosaur, because their sales are paltry compared to the novel and this is truly unfortunate. — Adam Ross

What do you do for fun?" he asked.
And suddenly we weren't at a table with a large group of people anymore. It was just Brad and me. We'd moved from a wink to a nudge to a discussion, but his interest was going to disappear if I didn't think of something exciting to share.
"I like to read mysteries."
"Read."
He repeated the word like I'd just told him that I enjoyed stepping in dog poop. — Rachel Hawthorne

Death possesses a good deal, of real estate, namely, the graveyard in every town. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The artist glanced at the inflexible image of king, commander, dame, and allegory, that stood around, on the best of which might have been bestowed the questionable praise that it looked as if a living man had here been changed to wood, and that not only the physical, but the intellectual and spiritual part, partook of the stolid transformation. But in not a single instance did it seem as if the wood were imbibing the ethereal essence of humanity. What a wide distinction is here! and how far the slightest portion of the latter merit have outvalued the utmost degree of the former! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thus content with an inner sphere which they inhabit together, it is not immediately that the outward world can obtrude itself upon their notice. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

All of West Ham's away victories have come on opponents' territory this season — Rob Hawthorne

The aspect of the venerable mansion has always affected me like a human countenance, bearing the traces not merely of outward storm and sunshine, but expressive also, of the long lapse of mortal life, and accompanying vicissitudes that have passed within. Were these to be worthily recounted, they would form a narrative of no small interest and instruction, and possessing, moreover, a certain remarkable unity, which might almost seem the result of artistic arrangement. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Of the family tree, with so much venerable moss upon it, should have borne, as its topmost bough, an idler like myself. No aim that I have ever cherished would they recognise as laudable; no success of mine - if my life, beyond its domestic scope, had ever been brightened by success - would they deem otherwise than worthless, if not positively disgraceful. "What is he?" murmurs one grey — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Been calm in temperament, kindly, though not of warm — Nathaniel Hawthorne

They stood in the noon of that strange and solemn splendor, as if it were the light that is to reveal all secrets, and the daybreak that shall unite all who belong to one another — Nathaniel Hawthorne

But what could be the purpose of the unseasonable toil, which was again resumed, as the watchman knew by the lines of lamp-light through the crevices of Owen Warland's shutters? The townspeople had one comprehensive explanation of all these singularities. Owen Warland had gone mad! How universally efficacious
how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured sensibility of narrowness and dullness
is this easy method of accounting for whatever lies beyond the world's most ordinary scope!
- The Artist of the Beautiful — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was a circumstance to be noted on the summer morning when our story begins its course, that the women, of whom there were several in the crowd, appeared to take a peculiar interest in whatever — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It is good to know one's enemy.
It is better to know one's self. — Max Hawthorne

Nucleus of all the congregated sepulchres in the old churchyard — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The countries that are the least responsible for causing climate change are paying the heaviest price. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

I make soul music for hip-hop heads. It's music I'd want to sample if I were a rapper. — Mayer Hawthorne

I moved to New England partly because it has a real literary past. The ghosts of Hawthorne and Melville still sit on those green hills. The worship of Mammon is also somewhat lessened there by the spirit of irony. I don't get hay fever in New England either. — John Updike

I had wanted for so many years to feel that writing really was at the center of my life, not something I did in my spare time. So the writing and teaching feel in some way to be one thing - the personal engagement and the social engagement good partners. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never
any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Men of cold passions have quick eyes. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Ocean?""Yeah baby." "Please don't leave me like everyone else, don't let me drown Ocean." "I hugged her tighter. "Livie I won't let you drown. If you drown, I drown baby." I held onto her and closed my eyes, and silently cried myself to sleep. *Ocean Hawthorne* — MEL D

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

With any cover, I like to choose songs that affected me strongly already. So it's tough sometimes to take a song that you love so much and put your own spin on it because you get such a strong feeling from the original. — Mayer Hawthorne

That last night," she said quietly. "Why did you say you hoped you'd never see me again?"
He hadn't said it; it had been his last thought when he'd turned to leave. But he didn't seem to notice the discrepancy as he looked at her now.
"Because," he began before faltering, his voice leaving on a sigh. His left hand reached to rake a path through his hair, scattering the inky thickness in all directions. "The more I learn of you, the more difficult it is to stay away. — Angela B. Wade

She marvelled how she could ever have been wrought upon to marry him! She deemed it her crime most to be repented of, that she had ever endured and reciprocated the lukewarm grasp of his hand, and had suffered the smile of her lips and eyes to mingle and melt into his own. And it seemed a fouler offence committed by Roger Chillingworth than any which had since been done him, that, in the time when her heart knew no better, he had persuaded her to fancy herself happy by his side. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

God is so pleased when He finds His heart beating in another. — Steven C. Hawthorne

And we have so far improved upon the custom of Adam and Eve, that we generally furnish forth our feasts with a portion of some delicate calf or lamb, whose unspotted innocence entitles them to the happiness of becoming our sustenance. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hence, too, might be drawn a weighty lesson from the little-regarded truth, that the act of the passing generation is the germ which may and must produce good or evil fruit in a far-distant time; that, together with the seed of the merely temporary crop, which mortals term expediency, they inevitably sow the acorns of a more enduring growth, which may darkly overshadow their posterity. The — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I sometimes fancy," said Hilda, on whose susceptibility the scene always made a strong impression, "that Rome
mere Rome
will crowd everything else out of my heart. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart. They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that perchance belong to a deeper one. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The present is burthened too much with the past. — 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

Oh Hilda, what a treasure of sweet faith and pure imagination you hide under that little straw hat! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thus, by an inevitable necessity, as a magnet attracts steel-fillings, so did our man of business draw to himself the difficulties which everybody met with. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

No point in playing if your goal is to lose. — Rachel Hawthorne

The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The chain that bound her here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost soul, but could never be broken. It — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mankind are earthen jugs with spirits in them. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

You said you thought the first guy you fell for would be the one.That's what you've been searching for.Like you think you'll meet him and a whole chorus of angels will sing and you'lle know he's it! But it doesn't always work like that.Actually, i don't think it ever works like that.Usually you have to kiss a lot of frogs before you stop getting warts. — Rachel Hawthorne

Talent can be bought and sold. Reputations can be fabricated. But true ingenuity cannot be stolen. And my cooperation is something you will never receive. — Aria Hawthorne

The daguerreotypist once whispered her that these marks betokened the oddities of the Pyncheon family, and that the chicken itself was a symbol of the life of the old house, embodying its interpretation, likewise, although an unintelligible one, as such clews generally are. It was a feathered riddle; a mystery hatched out of an egg, and just as mysterious as if the egg had been addle! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Her breast, with its badge of shame, was but the softer pillow for the head that needed one. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues, before I could see her as she really was. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Don't wait for life to tap you on the shoulder.Go out and tap it. — Rachel Hawthorne

Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Lindsey: Why would you choose me?
Rafe: Because you're the one I want. — Rachel Hawthorne

It's just that,well,I'm gonna pull a Brad on you."
"You're going to start totally ignoring me? — Rachel Hawthorne

I've always been the DJ or the bass player or the drummer, somebody in the background. I don't think anybody who knows me personally would say that I'm particularly shy or introverted, but I'm definitely not like Mr. Attention. — Mayer Hawthorne

This was the door to both sustenance and sanity. And we were each other's key. — Suzanne Collins

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

New books feel special," said Hawthorne. "They're like babies born into the skin of old men. — Mark Beauregard

Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so in exorable as one's self! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The door of the jail being flung open, the young woman stood fully revealed before the crowd. It seemed to be her first impulse to clasp the infant closely to her bosom that she might conceal a certain token which was wrought or fastened to her dress. In a moment, however, wisely judging that one token of her shame would but poorly serve to hide another, she took the baby on her arm, and, with a burning blush and yet a haughty smile, looked around at her townspeople and neighbors. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The witnesses of Hester Prynne's disgrace had not yet passed beyond their simplicity. They were stern enough to look upon her death, had that been the sentence, without a murmur at its severity, but had none of the heartlessness of another social state, which would find only a theme for jest in an exhibition like the present. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The greatest possible mint of style is to make the words absolutely disappear into the thought. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

The most powerful minds are not always the best acquainted with their own feelings. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Swing a bigger brush - you don't know what you're missing. — Charles Webster Hawthorne

Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It might be, too - doubtless it was so, although she hid the secret from herself, and grew pale whenever it struggled out of her heart, like a serpent from its hole - it might be that another feeling kept her within the scene and pathway that had been so fatal. There dwelt, there trode, the feet of one with whom she deemed herself connected in a union that, unrecognised on earth, would bring them together before the bar of final judgment, and make that their marriage-altar, for a joint futurity of endless retribution. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

In my own behalf, I rejoice that I could once think better of the world's improvability than it deserved. It is a mistake into which men seldom fall twice in a lifetime; or, if so, the rarer and higher is the nature that can thus magnanimously persist in error. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

And I found a statement by Hawthorne which helped to explain his method: "I have sometimes produced a singular and not unpleasing effect, so far as my own mind was concerned, by imagining a train of incidents in which the spiritual mechanism of the faery legend should be combined with the characters and manners of everyday life. — Peter Straub

I do detest all offices - all, at least, that are held on a political tenure. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is a difference between our wisdom and nature's simplicity. That reflects the burden of a complex intelligence. A complex intelligence like ours is impotent compared to the intelligence of a monarch butterfly migrating from Canada to Mexico, or the intelligence of hummingbirds that have co-evolved with the flowers all along their migration route. That seems so simple; it just happens, it just unfolds. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

When I was a child, I loved 'The Marble Faun' by Nathaniel Hawthorne. The reason I liked it was because it had a beautiful binding. When you're a kid, you like books because they're pretty to look at, and this one had a white calfskin cover and gold edges. That was enough to make me love it. — Edmund White

Clifford, except for Phoebe's more active instigation, would ordinarily have yielded to the torpor which had crept through all his modes of being, and which sluggishly counselled him to sit in his morning chair, till eventide. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Study continuously, developing yourself into a better person, more sensitive to things in nature. Spend years in getting ready. — Charles Webster Hawthorne

When it comes to creating compelling fiction, the devil may be in the details, but it is your imagination that ultimately allows your work to spread its wings and take flight. And fly it must. Only by soaring above the clouds of doubt can one truly achieve a suspension of disbelief — Max Hawthorne

I learn the most from trial and error. I learn about what I'd like to be able to do from people like Barbara Mason. Saying I want to sing like Barbara Mason and doing it, it's two very different scenarios. — Mayer Hawthorne

Men of his strength of purpose, and customary sagacity, if they chance to adopt a mistaken opinion in practical matters, so wedge it and fasten it among things known to be true, that to wrench it out of their minds is hardly less difficult than pulling up an oak. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Sometimes, I'll craft a scene that's so poignant; on the last keystroke I'll raise my hands high overhead and scream "Yes!" at the top of my lungs. I have yet to experience an orgasm so powerful and fulfilling. — Max Hawthorne

Thus we see, too, in the world that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautiful results
the fragrance of celestial flowers
to the daily life of others. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Those who can write, write.
Those who can't, criticize. — Max Hawthorne

Thou shalt say a thousand things, and saying them a thousand times over, thou shalt still have said nothing! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Give me a rose, that I may press its thorns, and prove myself awake by the sharp touch of pain! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom ... — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Moonlight is sculpture. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A bachelor always feels himself defrauded, when he knows or suspects that any woman of his acquaintance has given herself away. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory; and any man who does, is not worthy of one. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I'm really interested in culture because it is such a powerful human force, particularly in America where we think it's all about the individual. — Alison Hawthorne Deming

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Death should take me while I am in the mood. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Peace be with all the world! My blessing on my friends! My forgiveness to my enemies! For I am in the realm of quiet! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Your fantastic anticipations make me discern all the more forcibly what a wretched, unsubstantial scheme is this, on which we have wasted a precious summer of our lives. Do you seriously imagine that any such realities as you, and many others here, have dreamed of, will ever be brought to pass? — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Oh, glorious Art!" thus mused the enthusiastic painter, as he trod the street. "Thou art the image of the Creator's own. The innumerable forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The dead live again. Thou recallest them to their old scenes, and givest their gray shadows the lustre of a better life, at once earthly and immortal. Thou snatchest back the fleeing moments of History. With thee, there is no Past; for at thy touch, all that is great becomes forever present; and illustrious men live through long ages in the visible performance of the very deeds which made them what they are. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Is not the kindred of a common fate a closer tie than that of birth? — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Take a kid fishing. You'll capture their imagination. — Max Hawthorne

Hone your writing skills as if they were your finest weapons of war. For in the literary arena, your pen will truly be your sword. — Max Hawthorne

All through life that piece of crape had hung between him and the world; it had separated him from cheerful brotherhood and woman's love and kept him in that saddest of all prisons his own heart; — Nathaniel Hawthorne

She wanted to know what American writers I liked. "Hawthorne, Henry James, Emily Dickinson ... " "No, living." Ah, well, hmm, let's see: how difficult, the rival factor being what it is, for a contemporary author, or would-be author, to confess admiration for another. At last I said, "Not Hemingway - a really dishonest man, the closet-everything. Not Thomas Wolfe - all that purple upchuck; of course, he isn't living. Faulkner, sometimes: Light in August. Fitzgerald, sometimes: Diamond as Big as the Ritz, Tender Is the Night. I really like Willa Cather. Have you read My Mortal Enemy?" With no particular expression, she said, "Actually, I wrote it. — Truman Capote