Quote

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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.
Better
Fowl
Little
Brute
Utterance
Human
Brutes
Humans
Adequate
Fowls
Sometimes
Language
Cackle
Nature
Croak
Littles
Utterances

More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

Image
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
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
Image
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
Just as there comes a warm sunbeam into every cottage window, so comes a lovebeam of God's care and pity for every separate need.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
Great men need to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas or perform their great deeds. That is, there must be an atmosphere of greatness round about them. A hero cannot be a hero unless in an heroic world.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
Though we speak nonsense, God will pick out the meaning of it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
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
Image
It loves more readily than it hates.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
The divine chemistry works in the subsoil.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
A human spirit may find no insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom House.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
What is the voice of song when the world lacks the ear of taste?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
The book, if you would see anything in it, requires to be read in the clear, brown, twilight atmosphere in which it was written if opened in the sunshine, it is apt to look exceedingly like a volume of blank pages.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Image
No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
Nathaniel Hawthorne