We go all wrong by too strenuous a resolution to go right. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream it may be so the moment after death. – Nathaniel Hawthorne
Tell a man whose house is on fire to give a moderate alarm; tell him to moderately rescue his wife from the hands of the ravisher; tell the mother to gradually extricate her babe from the fire into which it has fallen; but urge me not to use moderation in a case like the present. – William Lloyd Garrison