Sunlight is painting.

Those with whom we can apparently become well acquainted in a few moments are generally the most difficult to rightly know and to understand.

Articulate words are a harsh clamor and dissonance. When man arrives at his highest perfection, he will again be dumb.

It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.

We are as happy as people can be, without making themselves ridiculous, and might be even happier; but, as a matter of taste, we choose to stop short at this point.

What is there so ponderous in evil, that a thumb's bigness of it should outweigh the mass of things not evil, which were heaped into the other scale!

Most people are so constituted that they can only be virtuous in a certain routine; an irregular course of life demoralizes them.