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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.

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.
May
Uttered
Feel
Wisely
Feels
Convincing
Writing
Spent
Long
Youth
Really
Realizing
Men
Wisdom
Remainder
Life
Write
Idly

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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.
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A throng of bearded men in sad-colored garments and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods, and other bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.
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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.
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Our Creator would never have made such lovely days, and have given us the deep hearts to enjoy them, above and beyond all thought, unless we were meant to be immortal.
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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.
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Every crime destroys more Edens than our own
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By the sympathy of your human hearts for sin ye shall scent out all the places — whether in church, bedchamber, street, field, or forest — where crime has been committed, and shall exult to behold the whole earth one stain of guilt, one mighty blood spot.
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All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent.
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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.
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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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Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
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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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Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
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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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There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life but circumstances may rouse it to activity.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.
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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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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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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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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