Possibly, some cynic, at once merry and bitter, had desired to signify, in this pantomimic scene, that we mortals, whatever our business or amusement–however serious, however trifling–all dance to one identical tune, and, in spite...

On Andrew Jackson: “His native strength compelled every man to be his tool that came within his reach; and the more cunning the individual might be, it served only to make him a sharper tool.

He had been driven hither by the impulse of that Remorse which dogged him everywhere, and whose own sister and closely linked companion was that Cowardice which invariably drew him back, with her tremulous gripe,...

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

He had that sense, or inward prophecy,– which a young man had better never have been born than not to have, and a mature man had better die at once than utterly to relinquish,– that...

Unable to penetrate to the secret place of his soul where his motives lay hidden, he believed that a supernatural voice had called him onward, and that a supernatural power had obstructed his retreat.

It was no wonder that they thus questioned one another’s actual and bodily existence, and even doubted of their own. So strangely did they meet in the dim wood that it was like the first...

Some attribute had departed from her, the permanence of which had been essential to keep her a woman. Such is frequently the fate, and such the stern development, of the feminine character and person, when...

Technologies of easy travel “give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore,...

It was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to...

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.

His was the profession at that era in which intellectual ability displayed itself far more than in political life; for—leaving a higher motive out of the question it offered inducements powerful enough in the almost...

…Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man’s faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil’s office.

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...

Easy reading is damn hard writing.

All have some artificial badge which the world, and themselves among the first, learn to consider as a genuine characteristic.

And as for Owen Warland, he looked placidly at what seemed the ruin of his life’s labor, and which was yet no ruin. He had caught a far other butterfly than this. When the artist...

He was not ill-fitted to be the head and representative of a community which owed its origin and progress, and its present state of development, not to the impulses of youth, but to the stern...

Strength is incomprehensible by weakness, and, therefore, the more terrible.

Time flies over us, but leaves its shadow behind.

Death should take me while I am in the mood.

Might and wrong combined, like iron magnetized, are endowed with irresistible attraction.

Many people are seeking, at this very moment, to shelter themselves under the wing of the federal eagle; imagining, I presume, that her bosom has all the softness and snugness of an eider-down pillow. But...

This was a freedom essential to the health even of a character so little susceptible of morbid influences as that of Phoebe. The old house [with dry rot in its structure and perhaps also in...

Words – so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them.

The mind is in a sad state when Sleep, the all-involving, cannot confine her spectres within the dim region of her sway, but suffers them to break forth, affrighting this actual life with secrets that...

Calm, gentle, passionless as he appeared, there was yet, we fear, a quiet depth of malice, hitherto latent, but active now, in this unfortunate old man, which led him to imagine a more intimate revenge...

It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders...

Unfathomable to mere mortals is the lore of fiends.

In either case, there was very much the same solemnity of demeanour on the part of the spectators, as befitted a people among whom religion and law were almost identical, and in whose character both...

Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living.

Do anything, save to lie down and die!

Man’s own youth is the world’s youth; at least, he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earth’s granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape...

What’s that you mutter to yourself, Matthew Maule?” asked Scicpio. “And what for do you look so black at me?””No matter, darky,” said the carpenter. “Do you think nobody is to look black but yourself?

The whole forest was peopled with frightful sounds–the creaking of the trees, the howling of wild beasts, and the yell of Indians; while sometimes the wind tolled like a distant church bell, and sometimes gave...

he seemed to be in quest for mental food, not heart sustenance.

That Jim Crow there in the window,” answered the urchin, holding out a cent, and pointing to the gingerbread figure that had attracted his notice, as he loitered along to school; “the one that has...

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.