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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.
Anything
Going
Long
Assent
Proposition
Propositions
Agreement
Almost

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Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.
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This greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all things-from the right of saying, in every conjuncture, This, too, will pass away.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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A screen... the scenery and the figures of life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribably difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more attractive than the original.
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Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
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A high truth, indeed, fairly, finely, and skilfully wrought out, brightening at every step, and crowning the final development of a work of fiction, may add an artistic glory, but is never any truer, and seldom any more evident, at the last page than at the first.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Truth often finds its way to the mind close muffled in robes of sleep, and then speaks with uncompromising directness of matters in regard to which we practise an unconscious self-deception during our waking moments.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The present is burthened too much with the past.
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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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
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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
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Do anything, save to lie down and die!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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There can be...no power...to disclose...the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them until the day when all hidden things be revealed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Man is a wretch without woman but woman is a monster-and thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster--without man, as her acknowledged principal!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Would all, who cherish such wild wishes, but look around them, they would oftenest find their sphere of duty, of prosperity, and happiness, within those precincts, and in that station where Providence itself has cast their lot. Happy they who read the riddle without a weary world-search, or a lifetime spent in vain!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Sunlight is painting.
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
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne