If his inmost heart could have been laid open, there would have been discovered that dream of undying fame, which, dream as it is, is more powerful t… - Nathaniel Hawthorne

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so in exorable as one's self!

With Heaven above and Faith below, I will yet stand firm against the Devil!

But thou shalt leave it all behind thee! It shall not cumber thy steps, as thou treadest along the forest-path; neither shalt thou freight the ship with it, if thou prefer to cross the sea. Leave this wreck and ruin here where it hath happened! Meddle no more with it! Begin all anew! Hast thou exhausted possibility in the failure of this one trial? Not so! The future is yet full of trial and success. There is happiness to be enjoyed! There is good to be done! Exchange this false life of thine for a true one. Be, if thy spirit summons thee to such a mission, the teacher and apostle of the red men. Or, — as is more thy nature, — be a scholar and a sage among the wisest and the most renowned of the cultivated world. Preach! Write! Act! Do any thing, save to lie down and die! Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame. Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life! — that have made thee feeble to will and to do! — that will leave thee powerless even to repent! Up, and away!