The Scarlet Letter

"Of penance I have had enough! Of penitence too, there has been much!"

"I am not, Hester, of that iron nature that can endure well enough what is unendurable to the human soul."

"Thou hast great elements. Peradventure, hadst thou met earlier with a better love than mine, this evil had not been."

"What we did had a consecration of its own."

"That old man!—if anything could make him just, it were this!"

"Thou knowest that I was frank with thee. I felt no love."

"I choose to remain in this place, and to abide my sentence."

"There is a sympathy that will make me conscious of thy pain."

"I am resolved to know the truth of the matter."

"That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin."

"We have wronged each other into an iron necessity."

"Thy mother dares not wink at thee!"

"Here is the girl by whose means thou shalt have thy will."

"I have a strange fancy that this scarlet letter is of magic power."

"Better to die at once!"

"Didst thou suppose that I came hither to torture thee?"

"Thou and I have been the victims of thy sin."

"Is the guilt inscribed upon my brow?"

"Thou art not evil!—yet hadst thou great in thy nature."

"I am alone in the world—and Pearl is with me!"

"There is virtue in any suffering if thou canst acquire it!"

"Wouldst thou avenge thyself on the innocent babe?"

"May God forgive us both!"

"Shall we not be united again?"

"Art thou like the Black Man that haunts the forest?"

"My little Pearl was not only alive, but likewise to be loved."

"I pity thee, for the good that has been wasted in thy nature!"

"Thou hast kept the secret of my parentage."

"What we did had a consecration of its own."

"Be true! Be true! Be true!"