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Nathaniel Hawthorne Quotes: Sources, Meanings & Themes

Browse quotations by Nathaniel Hawthorne with named works, context notes, meanings and recurring themes.

Sources

All 3 works represented in this collection

The House of the Seven Gables1851 · 1 quotation
The Scarlet Letter1850 · 1 quotation
Twice-Told Tales — Footprints on the Seashore1835 · 1 quotation
Leading recurring themes
Identity 2Mind 1Wisdom 1Calm 1Deep 1Inner Peace 1Nature 1Peace 1Integrity 1Truth 1Self-Awareness 3Thought Provoking 3
Source identified1
For, what other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!
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“For, what other dungeon is so dark as one’s own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one’s self!”

The House of the Seven Gables · 1851
Meaning & context

Hawthorne’s narrator turns imprisonment inward, suggesting that guilt, memory and self-judgment can confine a person more relentlessly than an external cell.

Source details

The House of the Seven Gables, Project Gutenberg #77. This is Gothic literary narration surrounding Clifford’s long history of confinement and inner suffering; the metaphor is not a clinical account of mental illness.

Source identified2
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 the true.
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“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 the true.”

The Scarlet Letter · 1850
Meaning & context

Hawthorne warns that sustained conflict between a private self and a public performance can eventually confuse a person’s own sense of identity.

Source details

The Scarlet Letter, Chapter XX, “The Minister in a Maze,” Project Gutenberg #33. Hawthorne’s narrator says that a man who long wears one face privately and another before the multitude may become bewildered about which is true while describing Arthur Dimmesdale’s divided identity. It remains literary moral and psychological characterization rather than a clinical diagnosis.

Source identified3
It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the world to plunge into the cool bath of solitude.
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“It must be a spirit much unlike my own which can keep itself in health and vigor without sometimes stealing from the sultry sunshine of the world to plunge into the cool bath of solitude.”

Twice-Told Tales — Footprints on the Seashore · 1835
Meaning & context

Hawthorne’s essayistic narrator describes periodic withdrawal into solitary nature as personally restorative, contrasting social heat with the cooling distance of forest and sea.

Source details

“Footprints on the Seashore,” represented in Twice-Told Tales, Project Gutenberg #13707. The narrator immediately says that forest and ocean summon him away from human haunts; “health and vigor” is literary self-description, not medical advice.