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Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.

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.
Grows
Need
Lichens
Needs
Ivy
Writing
Ruin
Make
Ruins
Romance
Poetry
Grow

More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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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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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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A vast deal of human sympathy runs along the electric line of needlework, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humble seamstress.
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Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!
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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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When a writer calls his work a Romance, it need hardly be observed that he wishes to claim a certain latitude, both as to its fashion and material, which he would not have felt himself entitled to assume had he professed to be writing a Novel.
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There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory and any man who does, is not worthy of one.
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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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We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.
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What a sweet reverence is that when a young man deems his mistress a little more than mortal and almost chides himself for longing to bring her close to his heart.
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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.
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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.
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Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
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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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Let the black flower blossom as it may!
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Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream
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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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The present is burthened too much with the past.
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What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!
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Yesterday I visited the British Museum an exceedingly tiresome affair. It quite crushes a person to see so much at once and I wandered from hall to hall with a weary and heavy heart. The present is burdened too much with the past.
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