Nathaniel Hawthorne (1804 – 1864) was an American novelist and short story writer. Although most of his childhood was spent in Massachusetts, his fondest memories were of Maine, where he lived for a time in the countryside. After graduating from Bowdoin College in 1825, he spent several years trying to succeed as a writer before finally taking a job at the Boston Custom House in 1839. In 1850, he returned to writing, soon publishing his best known novels The Scarlet Letter that same year and The House of the Seven Gables in 1851. His works, which often fall under the categories of Dark Romanticism and Gothic Literature, have gained him a reputation as a master of the allegorical and symbolic tale.
Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne…
Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.
No man can, for any considerable time, wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which is the true one.
We are but shadows: we are not endowed with real life, and all that seems most real about us is but the thinnest substance of a dream — till the heart be touched. That touch creates us — then we begin to be — thereby we are beings of reality and inheritors of eternity.
Keep the imagination sane — that is one of the truest conditions of communion with heaven.
All gloom is but a dream and a shadow… cheerfulness is the real truth.
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.
