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

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.
Propositions
Agreement
Almost
Anything
Going
Long
Assent
Proposition

More quotes by 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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When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind. Evil must be your only happiness. Welcome again, my children, to the communion of your race.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State -neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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
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The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man's moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind's eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.
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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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
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Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that concerns him, unreal so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation.
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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It loves more readily than it hates.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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How is it possible to sayan unkind or irreverential word of Rome? The city of all time, and of all the world!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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
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Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,—call it which you will,—is a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
Nathaniel Hawthorne