Nathaniel Hawthorne’s novel ‘The Scarlet Letter’ was published in 1850.
It is a famous historical fiction novel that is set in Puritan Massachusetts Bay Colony between 1642 and 1649.
The novel follows the story of Hester Prynne, who has a daughter through an affair and is publicly humiliated and compelled to wear a scarlet letter “A” on her clothes as a sign of her adultery.
I have handpicked some of the greatest quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel.
Table of Contents
The Scarlet Letter Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“The bookworm of great libraries.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“The struggle, if it were one, need not be described.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“All merely graceful attributes are usually the most evanescent.” ~ Hawthorne, Nathaniel, The Scarlet Letter
“We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“No, my little Pearl! Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and re-planted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out soil.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Hold thy peace, dear little Pearl!” whispered her mother. “We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
Other Book Quotes: The Book Thief Quotes by Markus Zusak and Fahrenheit 451 Quotes by Ray Bradbury
Best The Scarlet Letter Quotes
“We men of study, whose heads are in our books, have need to be straightly looked after! We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Trusting no man as his friend, he could not recognize his enemy when the latter actually appeared.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Her intellect and heart had their home, as it were, in desert places, where she roamed as freely as the wild Indian in his woods.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“The moment when a man’s head drops off is seldom or never, I am inclined to think, precisely the most agreeable of his life.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It is a strange experience for a man of pride and feeling to know that his interests are in the control of strangers who don’t like or understand him.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“To the untrue man, the whole universe is false- it is impalpable- it shrinks to nothing within his grasp. And he himself is in so far as he shows himself in a false light, becomes a shadow, or, indeed, ceases to exist.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“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.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It was one of those moments—which sometimes occur only at the interval of years—when a man’s moral aspect is faithfully revealed to his mind’s eye. Not improbably, he had never before viewed himself as he did now.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
Quotes from The Scarlet Letter
“But it is a strange experience, to a man of pride and sensibility, to know that his interests are within the control of individuals who neither love nor understand him.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Death was too definite an object to be wished for or avoided.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“But, all this while, I was giving myself very unnecessary alarm. Providence had mediated better things for me than I could possibly imagine for myself.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It is a good lesson – though it may often be a hard one – for a man… to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
Famous The Scarlet Letter Quotes
“So, to their own unutterable torment, they go about among their fellow-creatures, looking pure as new-fallen snow, while their hearts are all speckled and spotted with iniquity of which they cannot rid themselves.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“To the untrue man, the whole universe is false–it is impalpable–it shrinks to nothing within his grasp.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart! Else it may be their miserable fortune, when some mightier touch than their own may have awakened all her sensibilities, to be reproached even for the calm content, the marble image of happiness, which they will have imposed upon her as the warm reality.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“She had wandered, without rule or guidance, in a moral wilderness, as vast, as intricate, and shadowy as the untamed forest, amid the gloom of which they were now holding a colloquy that was to decide their fate.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“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.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister’s miserable experience, we put only this into sentence: Be True! Be True! Be True! Show freely to the world if not the worst, yet some trait whereby the worst can be inferred.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Be it sin or no, I hate the man!” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Few secrets can escape an investigator who has opportunity and license to undertake such a quest and skill to follow it up.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
Powerful The Scarlet Letter Quotes
“The sorrow that lay cold in her mother’s heart… converted it into a tomb.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Or—but this more rarely happened—she would be convulsed with a rage of grief, and sob out her love for her mother, in broken words, and seem intent on proving that she had a heart, by breaking it.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It contributes greatly towards a man’s moral and intellectual health, to be brought into habits of companionship with individuals unlike himself, who care little for his pursuits, and whose sphere and abilities he must go out of himself to appreciate.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It [the scarlet letter] had the effect of a spell, taking her out of the ordinary relations with humanity, and enclosing her in a sphere by herself.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“…if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom…” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Like all other music, it breathed passion and pathos, and emotions high or tender, in a tongue native to the human heart, wherever educated.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“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. The latter is perhaps the truest theory.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
Profound The Scarlet Letter Quotes
“There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“But this had been a sin of passion, not of principle, nor even purpose.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Shall we not spend our immortal life together? Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Like all other joys, she rejected it as sin.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“In all her intercourse with society, however, there was nothing that made her feel as if she belonged to it… She stood apart from mortal interests, yet close beside them, like a ghost that revisits the familiar fireside, and can no longer make itself seen or felt.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Women derive a pleasure, incomprehensible to the other sex, from the delicate toil of the needle.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman’s beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Wondrous strength and generosity of a woman’s heart! She will not speak!” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“We have yet to learn again the forgotten art of gayety.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
Top The Scarlet Letter Quotes by Nathaniel Hawthorne
“When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“She wanted—what some people want throughout life—a grief that should deeply touch her, and thus humanize and make her capable of sympathy.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“Do anything, save to lie down and die!” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“It is remarkable, that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society. The thoughts alone suffice them, without investing itself in the flesh and blood of action.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“The secrets that may be buried with a human heart.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“If a man, sitting all alone, cannot dream strange things, and make them look like truth, he need never try to write romances.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“In our nature, however, there is a provision, alike marvelous and merciful, that the sufferer should never know the intensity of what he endures by its present torture, but chiefly by the pang that rankles after it.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
“She could no longer borrow from the future to ease her present grief.” ~ Nathaniel Hawthorne (quotes from The Scarlet Letter novel).
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