Nathaniel Hawthorne

Happiness is as a butterfly, which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you.

Every individual has a place to fill in the world, and it is important in some respect where he choses to be so or not.

Last night there came a frost, which has done great damage to my garden.  . . . It is sad that Nature will so sport with us poor mortals, inviting us with sunny smiles to confide in her; and then, when we are entirely in her power, striking us to the heart.

A bodily disease, which we look upon as whole and entire within itself, may, after all, be but a symptom of some ailment in the spiritual part.

Words, - so innocent and powerless are they, as standing in a dictionary; how potent for good and evil they become to one who knows how to combine them!

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself, and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be true.

The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing; second, the gratification of one's family and friends; and, lastly, the solid cash.

Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and is never attained.  Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it.

Wherever there is a heart and an intellect, the diseases of the physical frame are tinged with the peculiarities of these.

The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom to know when it ought to be resisted, and when to be obeyed.