Why are poets so apt to choose their mates, not for any similarity of poetic endowment, but for qualities which might make the happiness of the rudest handicraftsman as well as that of the ideal craftsman of the spirit? Because, probably, at his highest elevation, the poet needs no human intercourse; but he finds it dreary to descend, and be a stranger.
Nathaniel HawthorneWriting can come naturally to some. Still, when it comes to good writing, this is true: Easy reading is damn hard writing.
Nathaniel HawthorneReligion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers.
Nathaniel HawthorneIn our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne