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Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.

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.
Shows
Nature
Best
Intimate
Friendship
Friend
Worst
Friends
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More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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No summer ever came back, and no two summers ever were alike. Times change, and people change and if our hearts do not change as readily, so much the worse for us.
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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.
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To do nothing is the way to be nothing.
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The present is burthened too much with the past.
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Keep the imagination sane--that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.
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We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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A man's bewilderment is the measure of his wisdom.
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The thing you set your mind on is the thing you ultimately become.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
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it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Accuracy is twin brother to honesty, and inaccuracy to dishonesty.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Technologies of easy travel give us wings they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude.
Nathaniel Hawthorne