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The world, that grey-bearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerable.

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.
World
Profligate
Bearded
Wrinkled
Decrepit
Venerable
Grey
Without

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And there I sat, long long ago, waiting for the world to know me.
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Ugliness without tact is horrible.
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You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.
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Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.
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Do anything, save to lie down and die!
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Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.
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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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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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To do nothing is the way to be nothing.
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Families are always rising and falling in America.
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Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.
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Insincerity in a man's own heart must make all his enjoyments, all that concerns him, unreal so that his whole life must seem like a merely dramatic representation.
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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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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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There is so much wretchedness in the world, that we may safely take the word of any mortal professing to need our assistance and, even should we be deceived, still the good to ourselves resulting from a kind act is worth more than the trifle by which we purchase it.
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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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We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream it may be so the moment after death.
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What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!
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Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.
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