When romances do really teach anything, or produce any effective operation, it is usually through a far more subtle process than the ostensible one. The author has considered it hardly worth his while, therefore, relentlessly to impale the story with its moral as with an iron rod-or, rather, as by sticking a pin through a butterfly-thus at once depriving it of life, and causing it to stiffen in an ungainly and unnatural attitude.
Nathaniel HawthorneSome 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 the woman has encountered, and lived through, an experience of peculiar severity. If she be all tenderness, she will die. If she survive, the tenderness will either be crushed out of her, orโand the outward semblance is the sameโcrushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.
Nathaniel HawthorneThe world surely has not another place like Oxford; it is a despair to see such a place and ever to leave it, for it would take a lifetime and more than one to comprehend and enjoy it satisfactorily.
Nathaniel HawthorneA vast deal of human sympathy runs along the electric line of needlework, stretching from the throne to the wicker chair of the humble seamstress.
Nathaniel HawthorneThere is no season when such pleasant and sunny spots may be lighted on, and produce so pleasant an effect on the feelings as now in October.
Nathaniel HawthorneIt is to the credit of human nature, that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.
Nathaniel Hawthorne