Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, this it overflows upon the outward world."

"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."

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

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

"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 in this world when it comes comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit and it leads us on a wild-goose chase and is never attained. Follow some other object and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it."

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

"To do nothing is the way to be nothing."

"All that they lacked was the gift that descended upon the chosen disciples at Pentecost, in tongues of flame; symbolizing, it would seem, not the power of speech in foreign and unknown languages, but that of addressing the whole human brotherhood in the heart's native language."

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."

"A few feathery flakes are scattered widely through the air, and hover downward with uncertain flight, now almost alighting on the earth, now whirled again aloft into remote regions of the atmosphere."

"A hero cannot be a hero unless in a heroic world."

"That Archangel, now, " Miriam continued; "how fair he looks, with his unruffled wings, with his unhacked sword, and clad in his bright armor, and that exquisitely fitting sky-blue tunic, cut in the latest Paradisiacal mode! What a dainty air of the first celestial society! With what half-scornful delicacy he sets his prettily sandaled foot on the head of his prostrate foe! But, is it thus that virtue looks the moment after its death struggle with evil? No, no; I could have told Guido better. A full third of the Archangel's feathers should have been torn from his wings; the rest all ruffled, till they looked like Satan's own! His sword should be streaming with blood, and perhaps broken half-way to the hilt; his armor crushed, his robes rent, his breast gory; a bleeding gash on his brow, cutting right across the stern scowl of battle! He should press his foot down upon the old serpent, as if his very soul depended upon it, feeling him squirm mightily, and doubting whether the fight were half over yet, and how the victory might turn! And, with all this fierceness, this grimness, this unutterable horror, there should be something high, tender, and holy in Michael's eyes, and around his mouth."

"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 and lifemates. Some authors, indeed, do far more than this, and indulge themselves in such confidential depths of revelation as could fittingly be addressed, only and exclusively, to the one heart and mind of perfect sympathy; as if the printed book, thrown at large on the wide world, were certain to find out the divided segment of the writer's own nature, and complete his circle of existence by bringing him into communion with it."

"Nothing gives a sadder sense of decay than this loss or suspension of the power to deal with unaccustomed things, and to keep up with the swiftness of the passing moment. [Speaking of self-posed isolation in old age.]"

"I have come to see the nonsense of trying to describe fine scenery."

"All brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for, whether in the daily battle of life, or in physical contests."

"She has lived and loved! There is no folded petal, no latent dewdrop, in this perfectly developed rose!"

"Cannot you conceive that another man may wish well to the world and struggle for its good on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down?"