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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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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.
Sometimes
Intervals
Mind
Viewed
Years
Occur
Never
Revealed
Men
Aspect
Moral
Improbably
Eye
Interval
Moments
Faithfully

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Let the black flower blossom as it may!
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What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
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Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
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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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And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.
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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.
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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.
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A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
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The world, that grey-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable.
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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.
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A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
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The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.
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Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.
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Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream it may be so the moment after death.
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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.
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Happiness is like a butterfly.
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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.
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Nobody will use other people's experience, nor have any of his own till it is too late to use it.
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In the depths of every heart there is a tomb and a dungeon, though the lights, the music, and the revelry above may cause us to forget their existence.
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