Methinks it is a token of healthy and gentle characteristics, when women of high thoughts and accomplishments love to sew; especially as they are never more at home with their own hearts than while so occupied.
Nathaniel HawthorneWhen an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.
Nathaniel HawthorneNothing 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.]
Nathaniel HawthorneMost people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.
Nathaniel HawthorneSleeping or waking, we hear not the airy footsteps of the strange things that almost happen.
Nathaniel HawthorneBut there is a fatality, a feeling so irresistible and inevitable that it has the force of doom, which almost invariably compels human beings to linger around and haunt, ghost-like, the spot where some great and marked event has given the colour to their lifetime; and, still the more irresistibly, the darker the tinge that saddens it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne