Wednesday, May 09, 2007

From the Mouth of Nathaniel Hawthorne

"I cannot endue to waste anything as precious as autumn sunshine by staying in the house. So I spend almost all the daylight hours in the open air."

"What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!"

"The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits."

"For my own part, having had much trouble in growing old, I am in no hurry to grow young again."

"Words -- so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."

"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 true."

"Happiness is as a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

"What is called poetic insight is the gift of discerning, in this sphere of strangely mingled elements, the beauty and the majesty which are compelled to assume a garb so sordid."

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