Nathaniel Hawthorne

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

A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!

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.

She poured out the liquid music of her voice to quench the thirst of his spirit.

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.

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.

Accuracy is the twin brother of honesty; inaccuracy, of dishonesty.

We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

Death should take me while I am in the mood.

You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.

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.

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.

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

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.

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.

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.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.

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.

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.