Quote

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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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.
Another
Shock
Come
Contact
Matter
Individuals
Contention
Heart
Approach
Purposes
Deep
Dread
Sides
Electric
Purpose
Seldom
Individual
Sudden

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Easy reading is damn hard writing.
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To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.
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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.
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A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
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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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The present is burthened too much with the past.
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Pleasant is a rainy winter's day, within doors! The best study for such a day, or the best amusement,—call it which you will,—is a book of travels, describing scenes the most unlike that sombre one
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Thus we see, too, in the world that some persons assimilate only what is ugly and evil from the same moral circumstances which supply good and beautiful results--the fragrance of celestial flowers--to the daily life of others.
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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.
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Men of cold passions have quick eyes.
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Let the black flower blossom as it may!
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Every crime destroys more Edens than our own
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I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State -neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.
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The love of posterity is the consequence of the necessity of death. If a man were sure of living forever here, he would not care about his offspring.
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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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There is evil in every human heart, which may remain latent, perhaps, through the whole of life but circumstances may rouse it to activity.
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Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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