Nevertheless, like the greater part of our misfortunes, even so serious a contingency brings its remedy and consolation with it, if the sufferer will but make the best, rather than the worst, of the accident which has befallen him.
Oh, how stubbornly does love, – or even that cunning semblance of love which flourishes in the imagination, but strikes no depth of root into the heart, – how stubbornly does it hold its faith until the moment comes when it is doomed to vanish into thin mist!
The closer you penetrated to the substance of his mind, the sounder it appeared.
Creation was not finished till the poet came to interpret, and so complete it.
It is but for a moment, comparatively, that anything looks strange or startling – a truth that has the bitter and the sweet in it.
The grass of many years has sprung up and withered on that grave, the burial-stone is mossgrown, and good Mr. Hooper’s face is dust; but awful is still the thought that it mouldered beneath the black veil.
Let us choose the rudest, roughest, most uncultivable spot, for Death’s garden ground; and Death shall teach us to beautify it, grave by grave.
That old woman taught me my catechism!” said the young man; and there was a world of meaning in this simple comment.
Yet perhaps the pale-faced congregation was almost as fearful a sight to the minister as his black veil to them.
The subject had reference to secret sin and those sad mysteries which we hide from our nearest and dearest, and would fain conceal from our own consciousness, even forgetting that the Omniscient can detect them.
Neither the front nor the back entrance of the Custom-House opens on the road to Paradise.
An infinite, inscrutable blackness has annihilated sight! Where is our universe? All crumbled away from us; and we, adrift in chaos, may hearken to the gusts of homeless wind, that go sighing and murmuring about in quest of what was once a world!
I wonder he is not afraid to be alone with himself.” “Men sometimes are so,” said her husband.
O Father in Heaven – if Thou art still my Father – what is this being which I have brought into the world?
She could no longer borrow from the future to help her through the present grief. Tomorrow would bring its own trial with it; so would the next day, and so would the next...
I felt as if it were better, or not worse, to have compressed my enjoyments and sufferings into a few wild years, and then to rest myself in an early grave, than to have chosen the untroubled and ungladdened course of the crowd before me, whose days were all alike, and a long lifetime like each day.
And the higher and purer the original object, and the more unselfishly it may have been taken up, the slighter is the probability that they can be led to recognize the process by which godlike benevolence has been debased into all-devouring egotism.
In the little chaos of Pearl’s character there might be seen emerging-and could have been from the very first-the steadfast principles of an unflinching courage-an uncontrollable will-a sturdy pride which might be disciplined into self-respect-and a bitter scorn of many things, which, when examined, might be found to have the taint of falsehood in them.
Still, there will be a connection with the long past – a reference to forgotten events and personages, and to manners, feelings, and opinions, almost or wholly obsolete – which, if adequately translated to the reader, would serve to illustrate how much of old material goes to make up the freshest novelty of human life.
Unless people are more than commonly disagreeable, it is my foolish habit to contract a kindness for them.