Human nature will not flourish, any more than a potato, if it be planted and replanted, for too long a series of generations, in the same worn-out so… - Nathaniel Hawthorne

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.

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.

Cannot you conceive that another man may wish well to the world and struggle for its good on some other plan than precisely that which you have laid down?

The latter is perhaps the truest theory. She who has once been a woman, and ceased to be so, might at any moment become a woman again, if there were only the magic touch to effect the transformation. We shall see whether Hester Prynne were ever afterwards so touched and so transfigured.