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Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!

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.
Honesty
Wisdom
Another
Persons
Frankness
Person
Pastime
Expense
Delightful
Expenses

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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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it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
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Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.
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If truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom.
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We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point.
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He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe, just when the other impulse had hurried him to the verge of a disclosure.
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It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.
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A human spirit may find no insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom House.
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A screen... the scenery and the figures of life were perfectly represented, but with that bewitching, yet indescribably difference, which always makes a picture, an image, or a shadow, so much more attractive than the original.
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This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
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In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it... She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt.
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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
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Every young sculptor seems to think that he must give the world some specimen of indecorous womanhood, and call it Eve, Venus, a Nymph, or any name that may apologize for a lack of decent clothing.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Let the black flower blossom as it may!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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What, in the name of common-sense, had I to do with any better society than I had always lived in?
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A stale article, if you dip it in a good, warm, sunny smile, will go off better than a fresh one that you've scowled upon.
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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.
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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