The Scarlet Letter Quotes & Sayings

If the truth were to be known, everyone would be wearing a scarlet letter of one form or another. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? Or, — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I want a sword to slit her end to end and then, with one hundred more cuts, dice her body into small pieces and leave the bloodied,quivering remains of skin, muscle, and soulless guts on her front lawn, arranged in a gruesome scarlet letter. — Julie Metz

Externally, the jollity of aged men has much in common with the mirth of children; the intellect, any more than a deep sense of humor, has little to do with the matter; it is, with both, a gleam that plays upon the surface, and imparts a sunny and cheery aspect alike to the green branch, and gray, mouldering trunk. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It's Nathaniel Hawthorne Month in English. Poor Nathaniel. Does he know what they've done to him? We're reading The Scarlet Letter one sentence at a time, tearing it up and chewing on its bones.
It's all about SYMBOLISM, says Hairwoman. Every word chosen by Nathaniel, every comma, every paragraph break
these were all done on purpose. To get a decent grade in her class, we have to figure out what he was really trying to say. Why couldn't he just say what he meant? Would they pin scarlet letters on his chest? B for blunt, S for straightforward? — Laurie Halse Anderson

Hypocrisy is the scarlet letter in politics. — Mark McKinnon

Struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne's? — Nathaniel Hawthorne

A hundred years ago Hester Prynne of The Scarlet Letter was given an A for adultery; today she would rate no better than a C-plus. — Peter De Vries

Destroy! destroy! destroy! hums the under-consciousness. Love and produce! Love and produce! cackles the upper consciousness. And the world hears only the Love-and- produce cackle. Refuses to hear the hum of destruction under- neath. Until such time as it will have to hear. — D.H. Lawrence

Would not the earth, quickened to an evil purpose by the sympathy of his eye, greet him with poisonous shrubs ... Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? — Nathaniel Hawthorne

I often felt like I was walking around with this Scarlet Letter stitched to my chest from the way that people treated me. — Toni Braxton

Twitter is sort of version of labeling, except with 140 characters instead of a labelmaker. It's the way of calling things out for what they are, wearing badges. Twitter is like the new Scarlet Letter. — Carrie Brownstein

She would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast - at her, the child of honourable parents - at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman - at her, who had once been innocent - as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Historically the Puritans left England to escape religious persecution, and they promptly turned around and started persecuting the people they didn't agree with - the scarlet letter A, and the stocks and the dunking board came from that. That puritanism is still there. — Hugh Hefner

The vulgar, who, in those dreary old times, were always contributing a grotesque horror to what interested their imaginations, had a story about the scarlet letter which we might readily work up into a terrific legend. They averred, that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth, tinged in an earthly dye-pot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight, whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the night-time. And we must needs say, it seared Hester's bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Aria: I went to Hollis. Because I was looking for ... you know. Her. She was teaching an art class, so I ran inside, grabbed a paintbrush, and painted a scarlet A across her chest. You know, like that woman in The Scarlet Letter? It was awesome. She didn't know what hit her. And then I said, 'Now everyone will know what you've done'.
Ella: Do you realize that Hester Prynne is supposed to be a sympathetic character? — Sara Shepard

CHAPTER XX. THE MINISTER IN A MAZE CHAPTER XXI. THE NEW ENGLAND HOLIDAY CHAPTER XXII. THE PROCESSION CHAPTER XXIII. THE REVELATION OF THE SCARLET LETTER — Nathaniel Hawthorne

She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness ... 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 ... The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers - stern and wild ones - and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Hawthorne's The Scarlet Letter. — John Irving

Individuals in private life, meanwhile, had quite forgiven Hester Prynne for her frailty; nay, more, they had begun to look upon the scarlet letter as the token, not of that one sin for which she had borne so long and dreary a penance, but of her many good deeds since. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

It was not an esthetic room. Though Frank Shallard might have come to admire pictures, great music, civilized furniture, he had been trained to regard them as worldly, and to content himself with art which 'presented a message,' to regard 'Les Miserables' as superior because the bishop was a kind man, and 'The Scarlet Letter' as a poor book because the heroine was sinful and the author didn't mind. — Sinclair Lewis

I wonder if I can write this history, or if on every page there will be some sneaking show of a bitterness I thought long dead. I think myself cured of all spite, but when I touch pen to paper, the hurt of a boy bleeds out with the sea-spawned ink, until I suspect each carefully formed black letter scabs over some ancient scarlet wound. — Robin Hobb

The common assumption is that public punishments died out in the new great metropolises because they'd been judged useless. Everyone was too busy being industrious to bother to trail some transgressor through the city crowds like some volunteer scarlet letter. But according to the documents I found, that wasn't it at all. They didn't fizzle out because they were ineffective. They were stopped because they were far too brutal. — Jon Ronson

She felt just like that girl in that book with the letter A on her chest. Only her A signified Alone. She was an outcast, cast out by her own choices, an outsider with a pretty face. Like a rose, she may have been beautiful to look at, but almost everyone only knew the thorny side. — Victoria Kahler

I told them this novel was an American classic, in many ways the quintessential American novel. There were other contenders: The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, Moby-Dick, The Scarlet Letter. Some cite its subject matter, the American Dream, to justify this distinction. We in ancient countries have our past
we obsess over the past. They, the Americans, have a dream: they feel nostalgia about the promise of the future. — Azar Nafisi

It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself. — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Could you be an old maid if you had worn the scarlet letter? — Kate Atkinson

Why, I ask, can I not finish the letter that I am writing? For my room is always scattered with unfinished letters. I begin to suspect, when I am with you, that I am among the most gifted of men. I am filled with the delight of youth, with potency, with the sense of what is to come. blundering, but fervid, I see myself buzzing round flowers, humming down scarlet cups, making blue funnels resound with my prodigious booming. How richly I shall enjoy my youth (you make me feel). And London. And freedom. But stop. You are not listening. You are making some protest, as you slide, with an inexpressibly familiar gesture, your hand along your knee. By such signs we diagnose our friends' diseases. "Do not, in your affluence and plenty," you seem to say, "pass me by." "Stop," you say. "Ask me what I suffer. — Virginia Woolf

Pluck up a spirit, and do not be all the time sighing and murmuring! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

Many of you remember The Scarlet Letter, the novel that wardrobed its protagonist in a stigma or sign of reproach. But "A" is not the only letter a person can feel she is wearing. Some of us have looked like we spilled alphabet soup on our sweaters. Beloved, if you are wearing any kind of reproach from your past - especially if victimization has placed a letter there that never belonged on you - may God remind you of the cross of Christ and memorialize the victory it brought you. Let Him cut that old piece of fabric from your life, roll it in the blood of Jesus, and cast it away forever. — Beth Moore

Self-publishing in comics is core to the whole artform. There is no scarlet letter in comics as there still is, to some degree, in prose. As no publisher for a long time would publish serious work in comics, the only way a lot of it came out was because of self-publishing. Many of the greatest works of the medium are self-published. — Kieron Gillen