When scattered clouds are resting on the bosoms of hills, it seems as if one might climb into the heavenly region, earth being so intermixed with sky, and gradually transformed into it. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove ones 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 it be obeyed. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Look out into the July night, and see the broad belt of silver flame which flashes up the half of heaven, fresh and delicate as the bonfires of the meadow-flies. Yet the powers of numbers cannot compute its enormous age,—lasting as space and time,—embosomed in time and space. – Ralph Waldo Emerson, “Progress of Culture”