Top 35 Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes

Words matter. These are the best Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes, and they’re great for sharing with your friends.

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love

Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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
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.
Nathaniel 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
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
You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Mountains are earth’s undecaying monuments.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A woman’s chastity consists, like an onion, of a series of coats.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
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. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
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. Their highest merit is suggestiveness.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nobody has any conscience about adding to the improbabilities of a marvelous tale.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
What we call real estate - the solid ground to build a

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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.
Nathaniel Hawthorne