The world owes all its onward impulses to men ill at ease. The happy man inevitably confines himself within ancient limits. - Nathaniel Hawthorne

she would become the general symbol at which the preacher and moralist might point, and in which they might vivify and embody their images of woman's frailty and sinful passion. Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast — at her, the child of honourable parents — at her, the mother of a babe that would hereafter be a woman — at her, who had once been innocent — as the figure, the body, the reality of sin. And over her grave, the infamy that she must carry thither would be her only monument.

is a little remarkable, that — though disinclined to talk overmuch of myself and my affairs at the fireside, and to my personal friends — an autobiographical impulse should twice in my life have taken possession of me, in addressing the public. The first time was three or four years since, when I favoured the reader — inexcusably, and for no earthly reason that either the indulgent reader or the intrusive author could imagine — with a description of my way of life in the deep quietude

Honesty and wisdom are such a delightful pastime, at another person's expense!