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The Scarlet Letter quotes
13 quotes from The Scarlet Letter by Nathaniel Hawthorne. Source: Project Gutenberg e-text #33 (public domain in the USA), the text this site’s reader shows. Each quote is copied exactly from that text and links to its passage in the reader; when this page was built, every quote was checked word for word against the reader’s text.
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.
Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister’s miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence:—“Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!”
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.
I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!
— Spoken by a character · XVII. THE PASTOR AND HIS PARISHIONER
“We must not always talk in the market-place of what happens to us in the forest.”
— Spoken by a character · XXII. THE PROCESSION
We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.
— Spoken by a character · XII. THE MINISTER’S VIGIL
She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom!
Let men tremble to win the hand of woman, unless they win along with it the utmost passion of her heart!
It is to the credit of human nature that, except where its selfishness is brought into play, it loves more readily than it hates. Hatred, by a gradual and quiet process, will even be transformed to love, unless the change be impeded by a continually new irritation of the original feeling of hostility.
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.
Could they be other than the insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester Prynne’s?
When an uninstructed multitude attempts to see with its eyes, it is exceedingly apt to be deceived.
There are many things in this world that a child must not ask about.
— Spoken by a character · XV. HESTER AND PEARL