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There is no such thing in man's nature as a settled and full resolve either for good or evil, except at the very moment of execution.

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.
Success
Evil
Settled
Moment
Wickedness
Moments
Execution
Nature
Resolve
Thing
Except
Good
Either
Men
Full

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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.
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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?
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We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.
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If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.
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Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.
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London is like the grave in one respect -- any man can make himself at home there and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better either die or go to London.
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Bees are sometimes drowned in the honey which they collectso some writers are lost in their collected learning.
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The divine chemistry works in the subsoil.
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This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
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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
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In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.
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I heard a neigh. Oh, such a brisk and melodious neigh it was. My very heart leapt with the sound.
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Unquestionably we do stand by our national flag as stoutly as any people in the world and I myself have felt the heart-throb at sight of it, as sensibly as other men.
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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.
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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!
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Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.
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No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
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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.
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Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.
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Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day.
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