Nathaniel Hawthorne

We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream; it may be so the moment after death.

Love, it is true, can never be divided between two hearts, within which it has planted its solitary life.

In our most trivial walks, we are constantly, though unconsciously, steering like pilots by certain well-known beacons and headlands.

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.

May none of us ever show so much of the white feather as to be willing to receive kindness without gratitude.

Happiness is not the only soil for love to grow in.

All that was bright and beautiful has passed away, and if there be a paradise on earth, it is of such a dim and fleeting nature that, once attained, it vanishes more quickly than any other paradise.

Life is made up of marble and mud.

There is no such thing as an empty space or an empty time. There is always something to see, something to hear. In fact, try as we may to make a silence, we cannot.

The truth seems to be, however, that, when he casts his leaves forth upon the wind, the author addresses, not the many who will fling aside his volume, or never take it up, but the few who will understand him, better than most of his schoolmates or lifemates.

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

The greatest friend of truth is time, her greatest enemy is prejudice, and her constant companion humility.