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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
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Nathaniel Hawthorne
Age: 59 †
Born: 1804
Born: July 4
Died: 1864
Died: May 18
Diplomat
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Writer
Salem
Massachusetts
Nathaniel Hathorne
Monsieur de l'Aubépine
N. H.
Words
Powerless
Language
Innocence
Hands
Innocent
Become
Honesty
Character
Integrity
Writing
Standing
Potent
Good
Virtue
Combine
Evil
Dictionary
More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne
What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.
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Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.
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Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
There is something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
To do nothing is the way to be nothing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.
Nathaniel 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
Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
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The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
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Families are always rising and falling in America.
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There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life but circumstances may rouse it to activity.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
In an ancient though not very populous settlement, in a retired corner of one of the New England states, arise the walls of a seminary of learning, which, for the convenience of a name, shall be entitled Harley College.
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
At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Life certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing day.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness is like a butterfly.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The heart of true womanhood knows where its own sphere is, and never seeks to stray beyond it!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Dream strange things and make them look like truth.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
I have come to see the nonsense of attempting to describe fine scenery. There is no such possibility. If scenery could be adequately reproduced in words, there would have been no need of God's making it in reality.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
