It will startle you to see what slaves we are to by-gone times-to Death, if we give the matter the right word! ... We read in Dead Men's books! We laugh at Dead Men's jokes, and cry at Dead Men's pathos! . . . Whatever we seek to do, of our own free motion, a Dead Man's icy hand obstructs us!
Nathaniel HawthorneThe best of us being unfit to die, what an unexpressible absurdity to put the worst to death.
Nathaniel HawthorneLabor is the curse of the world, and nobody can meddle with it without becoming proportionately brutalized.
Nathaniel HawthorneThere is an alchemy of quiet malice by which women can concoct a subtle poison from ordinary trifles.
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