The quotations of

Nathaniel Hawthorne

American author

1804–1864

23 quotes, most often on Love, Truth & Lies and Happiness.

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
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 the true.
The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XX: The Minister in a MazeIn context
- Truth & Lies
Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.
The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XVIII: A Flood of SunshineIn context
- Love
Moonlight is sculpture; sunlight is painting.
The American Notebooks (1835—1853), 1838
- Art
- Nature
Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom’s Day.
“Wakefield” (1835) from Twice Told Tales (1837, 1851)
- Time
- Youth
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), Chapter XXXIII: Pictured Windows
- Christianity
- Faith
Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and is important, in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.
The American Notebooks (1835—1853), 1836
The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits.
The House of the Seven Gables (1851), Ch. XX: The Flower of Eden
- Change
- Happiness
What would a man do, if he were compelled to live always in the sultry heat of society, and could never bathe himself in cool solitude?
The American Notebooks (1835—1853), 1836
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.
The American Notebooks (1835—1853), 1851
- Happiness
I have not lived, but only dreamed about living.
Letter to Henry Wadsworth Longfellow (4 June 1837)
- Life & Death
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart.
The Scarlet Letter (1850), Chapter XV: Hester and PearlIn context
- Love
- Marriage
Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed.
The Marble Faun (1860), Chapter XLI: Snowdrops and Maidenly Delights
- Art
- Poetry
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.
The Snow-Image, and Other Tales, Preface (1852)
It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.
The Scarlet Letter (1850), The Custom-HouseIn context
- Character
- Friendship

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