Nathaniel Hawthorne quotes

" Happiness is a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you. " # Happiness # Freedom # Power

" Moonlight is sculpture. " # Light # Architecture # Sculptures

" The trees reflected in the river -- they are unconscious of a spiritual world so near to them. So are we. " # Spirit and Spirituality # Action # Love

" Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. " # Happiness # Freedom # Power

" In old times, the settlers used to be astounded by the inroads of the northern Indians, coming down upon them from this mountain rampart, through some defile known only to themselves. It is indeed a wondrous path. A demon, it might be fancied, or one of the Titans, was travelling up the valley, elbowing the heights carelessly aside as he passed, till at length a great mountain took its stand directly across his intended road. He tarries not for such an obstacle, but rending it asunder, a thousand feet from peak to base, discloses its treasures of hidden minerals, its sunless waters, all the secrets of the mountain's inmost heart, with a mighty fracture of rugged precipices on each side. This is the Notch of the White Hills. Shame on me, that I have attempted to describe it by so mean an image — feeling, as I do, that it is one of those symbolic scenes, which lead the mind to the sentiment, though not to the conception, of Omnipotence. " # Age and Aging # Love # Friends and Friendship

" My fortune somewhat resembled that of a person who should entertain an idea of committing suicide, and, altogether beyond his hopes, meet with the good hap to be murdered. " # Misfortunes # Suicide # Murder

" Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love. " # Selfishness

" 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 it be obeyed. " # Heroes and Heroism # Obstacles # Wisdom

" The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. " # Happiness # Death and Dying # Action

" 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. " # Revolutions and Revolutionaries