The sorrow that lay cold in her mother’s heart… converted it into a tomb.

When he is cheerful–when the sun shines into his mind–then I venture to peep in, just as far as the light reaches, but no further. It is holy ground where the shadow falls!

I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. But, nevertheless, it is any thing but agreeable to...

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

Methought the germ of it was dead in me! Oh, Hester, thou art my better angel! I seem to have flung myself— sick, sin-stained, and sorrow-blackened— down upon these forest leaves, and to have risen...

Our first youth is of no value; for we are never conscious of it, until after it is gone. But sometimes–always, I suspect, unless one is exceedingly unfortunate–there comes a sense of second youth, gushing...

The artist glanced at the inflexible image of king, commander, dame, and allegory, that stood around, on the best of which might have been bestowed the questionable praise that it looked as if a living...

The sick in mind, and, perhaps, in body, are rendered more darkly and hopelessly so by the manifold reflection of their disease, mirrored back from all quarters in the deportment of those about them; they...

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...

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

But year after year that summons, unheard but felt, was disobeyed. His one secret thought became like a chain binding down his spirit and like a serpent gnawing into his heart.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not.

In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it… She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits...

It is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.

Ideas, which grow up within the imagination and appear so lovely to it and of a value beyond whatever men call valuable, are exposed to be shattered and annihilated by contact with the practical.

There was a listlessness in his gait, as if he saw no reason for taking one step further, nor felt any desire to do so, but would have been glad, could he be glad of...

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

To plant a family! This idea is at the bottom of most of the wrong and mischief which men do. The truth is, that, once in every half century, at longest, a family should be...

It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man’s moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind’s eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he...

It is the unspeakable misery of a life so false as his, that it steals the pith and substance out of whatever realities there are around us, and which were meant by Heaven to be...

When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived. When, however, it forms its judgment, as it usually does, on the intuitions of its great and warm...

Is it a fact – or have I dreamt it – that, by means of electricity, the world of matter has become a great nerve, vibrating thousands of miles in a breathless point of time?

Be it sin or no, I hate the man!

Oh, glorious Art!” thus mused the enthusiastic painter, as he trod the street. “Thou art the image of the Creator’s own. The innumerable forms that wander in nothingness start into being at thy beck. The...

Possibly, he was in a state of second growth and recovery, and was constantly assimilating nutriment for his spirit and intellect from sights, sounds, and events which passed as a perfect void to persons more...

It is very queer, but not the less true, that people are generally quite as vain, or even more so, of their deficiencies than of their available gifts.

Thou are my only reality– all other people are but shadows to me: all events and actions, in which thou dost not mingle, are but dreams.

She had wandered, without rule or guidance, into a moral wilderness… Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his...

Jim Crow, moreover, was seen executing his world-renowned dance, in gingerbread.

There can be, if I forebode aright, no power, short of the Divine mercy, to disclose, whether by uttered words, or by type or emblem, the secrets that may be buried with a human heart....

… for when a man’s spirit has been thoroughly crushed, he may be peevish at small offenses, but never resentful of great ones.

Had there been a Papist among the crowd of Puritans, he might have seen in this beautiful woman, so picturesque in her attire and mien, and with the infant at her bosom, an object to...

I have before now experienced that the best way to get a vivid impression and feeling of a landscape is to sit down before it and read, or become otherwise absorbed in thought; for then,...

Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.

They were, doubtless, good men, just and sage. But, out of the whole human family, it would not have been easy to select the same number of wise and virtuous persons, who should be less...

Poichè il destino e gli eventi li avevano tenuti per tanto tempo separati, occorrevva che qualche cosa di lieve e come indifferente corresse avanti ad aprire le porte dell’anima a parole più gravi, suggerite da...

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?

And Pearl, stepping in, mid-leg deep, beheld her own white feet at the bottom, while out of a still lower depth came the gleam of a kind of fragmentary smile, floating to and fro in...

all brave men love; for he only is brave who has affections to fight for.

Angels do not toil, but let their good works grow out of them.

…such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.

She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers.

Thus I did with Susan as with most other things in my earlier days, dipping her image into my mind and coloring it of a thousand fantastic hues, before I could see her as she...

Siate sinceri! Siate sempre sinceri! E mostrate francamente al mondo, se non proprio il vostro lato peggiore, almeno qualche aspetto, da cui possa essere noto il peggiore male che è in voi.

The fiend in his own shape is less hideous than when he rages in the breast of man.

Podría ser que viviese una vida más real en su fuero interno que en el ambiente tan ingrato de la oficina del administrador. Las evocaciones del desfile, el tumulto de la batalla, las melodías de...

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. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may...

In cases of distasteful occupation, the second day is generally worse than the first; we return to the rack with all the soreness of the preceding torture in our limbs.