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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.

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.
Life
Warm
Appreciate
Present
Existence
Around
Past
Burdened
Much
Earthly
Time
Immediately

More quotes by 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.
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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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We must not think too unkindly even of the east wind. It is not, perhaps, a wind to be loved, even in its benignest moods but there are seasons when I delight to feel its breath upon my cheek, though it be never advisable to throw open my bosom and take it into my heart, as I would its gentle sisters of the south and west.
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There is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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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No man for any considerable period can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.
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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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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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 something truer and more real, than what we can see with the eyes, and touch with the finger.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one ... to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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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?
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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I wonder that we Americans love our country at all, it having no limits and no oneness and when you try to make it a matter of the heart, everything falls away except one's native State -neither can you seize hold of that, unless you tear it out of the Union, bleeding and quivering.
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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.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Bees are sometimes drowned in the honey which they collectso some writers are lost in their collected learning.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Masculine observers, if the birth-mark did not heighten their admiration, contented themselves with wishing it away, that the world might possess one living specimen of ideal loveliness, without the semblance of a flaw.
Nathaniel Hawthorne