102 quotes
We do ourselves wrong, and too meanly estimate the Holiness above us, when we deem that any act or enjoyment, good in itself, is not good to do religiously.
The Marble Faun (1860)
One picture in ten thousand, perhaps, ought to live in the applause of mankind, from generation to generation until the colors fade and blacken out of sight or the canvas rot entirely away.
Christian faith is a grand cathedral, with divinely pictured windows. Standing without, you see no glory, nor can possibly imagine any; standing within, every ray of light reveals a harmony of unspeakable splendors.
The Marble Faun (1860)
In youth men are apt to write more wisely than they really know or feel; and the remainder of life may be not idly spent in realizing and convincing themselves of the wisdom which they uttered long ago.
As far as my experience goes, men of genius are fairly gifted with the social qualities; and in this age, there appears to be a fellow-feeling among them, which had not heretofore been developed.
The Hall of Fantasy (1843)
Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
What we call real estate—the solid ground to build a house on—is the broad foundation on which nearly all the guilt of this world rests.
As the moral gloom of the world overpowers all systematic gaiety, even so was their home of wild mirth made desolate amid the sad forest.
The Maypole of Merry Mount (1836)
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.
The American Notebooks (1835)
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.
The Blithedale Romance (1852)
We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straitly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Holligsworth would have gone with me to the hither verge of life, and have sent his friendly and hopeful accents far over on the other side, while I should be treading the unknown path.
The Blithedale Romance (1852)
My heart was a habitation large enough for many guests, but lonely and chill, and without a household fire. I longed to kindle one! It seemed not so wild a dream.
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Some maladies are rich and precious and only to be acquired by the right of inheritance or purchased with gold.
If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful than a thousand realities.
Fanshawe (1828)
The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
A bodily disease which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.
The Scarlet Letter (1850)
Life is made up of marble and mud.
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
God will give him blood to drink!
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)
Of all the events which constitute a person's biography, there is scarcely one — none, certainly, of anything like a similar importance — to which the world so easily reconciles itself as to his death.
The House of the Seven Gables (1851)