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We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.

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.
Resolution
Wrong
Right
Strenuous
Moderation

More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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Earth has one angel less and heaven one more, since yesterday.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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All brave men love for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests.
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Happiness is like a butterfly.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Let the black flower blossom as it may!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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At almost every step in life we meet with young men from whom we anticipate wonderful things, but of whom, after careful inquiry, we never hear another word. Life certain chintzes, calicoes, and ginghams, they show finely on their first newness, but cannot stand the sun and rain, and assume a very sober aspect after washing day.
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly-arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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It is a little remarkable, that - though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends - an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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We must not think too unkindly even of the east wind. It is not, perhaps, a wind to be loved, even in its benignest moods but there are seasons when I delight to feel its breath upon my cheek, though it be never advisable to throw open my bosom and take it into my heart, as I would its gentle sisters of the south and west.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Shall we never never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
Nathaniel Hawthorne