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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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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.
Though
Remarkable
Friends
Impulse
Disinclined
Littles
Affair
Overmuch
Little
Possession
Fireside
Book
Personal
Autobiographical
Life
Public
Addressing
Taken
Affairs
Talk
Twice

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A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
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A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
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When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it.
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Romance and poetry, ivy, lichens and wallflowers need ruin to make them grow.
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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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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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Easy reading is damn hard writing.
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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.
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Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature.
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What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
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Mountains are earth's undecaying monuments.
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Is it a fact-or have I dreamt it-that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?
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And what is more melancholy than the old apple-trees that linger about the spot where once stood a homestead, but where there is now only a ruined chimney rising our of a grassy and weed-grown cellar? They offer their fruit to every wayfarer--apples that are bitter-sweet with the moral of times vicissitude.
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The breath of peace was fanning her glorious brow, her head was bowed a very little forward, and a tress, escaping from its bonds, fell by the side of her pure white temple, and close to her just opened lips it hung there motionless! no breath disturbed its repose! She slept as an angel might sleep, having accomplished the mission of her God.
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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.
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Unquestionably we do stand by our national flag as stoutly as any people in the world and I myself have felt the heart-throb at sight of it, as sensibly as other men.
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All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent.
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A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere.
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The ideas of people in general are not raised higher than the roofs of the houses. All their interests extend over the earth's surface in a layer of that thickness. The meeting-house steeple reaches out of their sphere.
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Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.
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