“I cannot endure to waste anything so precious as autumnal sunshine by staying in the house.”

— Nathaniel Hawthorne, The American Notebooks, 1842

About Nathaniel Hawthorne

1804 – 1864

American novelist, author of "The Scarlet Letter".

“Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally.”

“It is perilous to make a chasm in human affections; not that they gape so long and wide—but so quickly close again!”

“Would Time but await the close of our favorite follies, we should all be young men, all of us, and until Doom's Day.”

“The better part of valour is discretion; in the which better part I have saved my life.”

“It is curious that physical courage should be so common in the world, and moral courage so rare.”

“Dictators ride to and fro on tigers from which they dare not dismount. And the tigers are getting hungry.”

“Sure I am of this, that you have only to endure to conquer.”

“The superior man, when resting in safety, does not forget that danger may come.”

“There is always a philosophy for lack of courage.”