Nathaniel Hawthorne

"The world is so sad and solemn that I thought it would be better to write something cheerful."

"Families are nothing but little tyrannies."

"A person is always startled when actualities are first unfolded to him."

"There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought."

"Art has its source in man's desire to express himself, and this desire is as old as humanity."

"The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove oneself a fool."

"We sometimes conceive an admiration for a man assembling in his single person a diversity of qualities."

"Guilt is a thing of exquisite sensitivity."

"The lesson of any life is contained in every moment of it."

"Temptation, it has been said, can resist everything except publicity."

"How little do we know the heart and soul of anyone after all."

"Nothing is easier than to invent untruth, but to live with it is a trial."

"There is always this lapse of several years or more before the world knows of a great man."

"A writer--and, I hope that I am now one--must have a name that is short, melodious, and distinctive."

"Human nature will not flourish, any more than will a potato, if it be planted and replanted in the same worn-out soil."

"The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread."

"Sorrow is the cement that holds society together."

"Self-knowledge is the first step toward self-improvement."

"The sunshine may invigorate the human soul to activity or cheerfulness."

"Despair is the only one of the vices which was not known to the Greeks."

"Love will make a man prisoner, and sacrifice will make him free."

"We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep."

"The only sensible ends of literature are the attainment of truth and the production of beauty."

"There must be something wrong in us that we are thus tormented with strange fantasies."

"Providence is always on the side of the strongest batallion."

"Penitence may be old-fashioned, but it is not yet obsolete."

"The mind requires a diet as well as the body."

"A man's most valuable trait is a judicious sense of what not to believe."

"What is the shadow of the future but yesterday?"

"Ambition is a trifle when it collides with great affection of the heart."