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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.

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.
Thinking
Precisely
Life
Seldom
Head
Moment
Moments
Never
Agreeable
Men
Drops
Think
Inclined

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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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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.
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We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.
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Such has often been my apathy, when objects long sought, and earnestly desired, were placed within my reach.
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We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.
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In an ancient though not very populous settlement, in a retired corner of one of the New England states, arise the walls of a seminary of learning, which, for the convenience of a name, shall be entitled Harley College.
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There can be...no power...to disclose...the secrets that may be buried with a human heart. The heart, making itself guilty of such secrets, must perforce hold them until the day when all hidden things be revealed.
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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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A man--poet, prophet, or whatever be may be--readily persuades himself of his right to all the worship that is voluntarily tendered.
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Language,-human language,-after all is but little better than the croak and cackle of fowls, and other utterances of brute nature,-sometimes not so adequate.
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A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!
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This dull river has a deep religion of its own so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though, perhaps, unconsciously.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.
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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
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What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
Nathaniel Hawthorne