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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.

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.
Higher
Roof
Roofs
Interest
Houses
Thickness
House
Meeting
Layer
Earth
Meetings
Extend
Ideas
Interests
Reaches
People
Surface
Sphere
Raised
Spheres
Steeple
General
Layers
Steeples

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The moment when a man's head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.
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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.
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We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.
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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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We sometimes congratulate ourselves.
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No author, without a trial, can conceive of the difficulty of writing a romance about a country where there is no shadow, no antiquity, no mystery, no picturesque and gloomy wrong, nor anything but a commonplace prosperity, in broad and simple daylight, as is happily the case with my dear native land.
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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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Ugliness without tact is horrible.
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His stories are good to hear at night, because we can dream about them asleep and good in the morning, too, because then we can dream about them awake. (Cowslip)
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The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of men.
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Technologies of easy travel give us wings they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man's inducement to tarry in one spot?
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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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A human spirit may find no insufficiency of food fit for it, even in the Custom House.
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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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The present is burdened too much with the past. We have not time, in our earthly existence, to appreciate what is warm with life, and immediately around us.
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A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
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Sunlight is painting.
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All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent.
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What a sweet reverence is that when a young man deems his mistress a little more than mortal and almost chides himself for longing to bring her close to his heart.
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