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To do nothing is the way to be nothing.

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.
Nothing
Way

More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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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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Let the attempt be made, at whatever risk.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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That pit of blackness that lies beneath us, everywhere ... the firmest substance of human happiness is but a thin crust spread over it, with just reality enough to bear up the illusive stage-scenery amid which we tread. It needs no earthquake to open the chasm.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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Or-but this more rarely happened-she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Families are always rising and falling in America.
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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When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh it was. My very heart leapt with the sound.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure - that is the choicest of all.
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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Do anything, save to lie down and die!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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When individuals approach one another with deep purposes on both sides they seldom come at once to the matter which they have most at heart. They dread the electric shock of a too sudden contact with it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne