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Book: The Scarlet Letter
Quotes of Book: The Scarlet Letter

Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
It was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.
book-quote otherness unique
Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!
book-quote vulnerability guilty-conscience
Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual fife upon another: each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his subject. Philosophically considered, therefore, the two passions seem essentially the same, except that one happens to be seen in a celestial radiance, and the other in a dusky and lurid glow.
book-quote love
Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread. Shame, Despair, Solitude! These had been her teachers,-stern and wild ones,-and they had made her strong, but taught her much amiss.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
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, or--and the outward semblance is the same--crushed so deeply into her heart that it can never show itself more.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
To-morrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next; each its own trial, and yet the very same that was now so unutterably grievous to be borne. The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up, and bear along with her, but never to fling down; for the accumulating days, and added years, would pile up their misery upon the heap of shame.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
To the untrue man, the whole universe is false--it is impalpable--it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.
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Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!
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Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
What a strange, sad man is he!" said the child, as if speaking partly to herself. "In the dark night-time, he calls us to him, and holds thy hand and mine, as when we stood with him on the scaffold yonder! And in the deep forest, where only the old trees can hear, and the strip of sky see it, he talks with thee, sitting on a heap of moss! And he kisses my forehead, too, that the little brook would hardly wash it off! But here in the sunny day, and among all the people, he knows us not; nor must we know him! A strange, sad man is he, with is hand always over his heart!
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Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
...Chillingworth was a striking evidence of man's faculty of transforming himself into a devil, if he will only, for a reasonable space of time, undertake a devil's office.
book-quote human sin
Nathaniel Hawthorne _ The Scarlet Letter
...such loss of faith is ever one of the saddest results of sin.
book-quote sin