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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

More quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne

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We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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A writer of story books! What kind of business in life-what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation-may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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London is like the grave in one respect -- any man can make himself at home there and whenever a man finds himself homeless elsewhere, he had better either die or go to London.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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This world owes all its forward impulses to people ill at ease.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Ugliness without tact is horrible.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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A pure hand needs no glove to cover it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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This greatest mortal consolation, which we derive from the transitoriness of all things-from the right of saying, in every conjuncture, This, too, will pass away.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The love of science to rival the love of woman, in its depth and absorbing energy.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Eager souls, mystics and revolutionaries, may propose to refashion the world in accordance with their dreams but evil remains, and so long as it lurks in the secret places of the heart, utopia is only the shadow of a dream
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Last night, there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.... It is sad that Nature will play such tricks on us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her, and then, when we are entirely within her power, striking us to the heart.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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There is great incongruity in this idea of monuments, since those to whom they are usually dedicated need no such recognition to embalm their memory and any man who does, is not worthy of one.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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The inward pleasure of imparting pleasure - that is the choicest of all.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne