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The present is burthened too much with the past.

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.
Present
Past
Much

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Dream strange things and make them look like truth.
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Echo is the voice of a reflection in a mirror.
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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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Man is a wretch without woman but woman is a monster-and thank Heaven, an almost impossible and hitherto imaginary monster--without man, as her acknowledged principal!
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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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it is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.
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We sometimes congratulate ourselves.
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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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To do nothing is the way to be nothing.
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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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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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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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As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.
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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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It is not good for man to cherish a solitary ambition. Unless there be those around him, by whose example he may regulate himself, his thoughts, desires, and hopes will become extravagant, and he the semblance, perhaps the reality, of a madman
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Shall we never never get rid of this Past? ... It lies upon the Present like a giant's dead body.
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This dull river has a deep religion of its own so, let us trust, has the dullest human soul, though, perhaps, unconsciously.
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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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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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I have come to see the nonsense of attempting to describe fine scenery. There is no such possibility. If scenery could be adequately reproduced in words, there would have been no need of God's making it in reality.
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