Lo, there ye stand, my children," said the figure, in a deep and solemn tone, almost sad with its despairing awfulness, as if his once angelic nature… - Nathaniel Hawthorne

Depending upon one another's hearts, ye had still hoped that virtue were not all a dream. Now are ye undeceived. Evil is the nature of mankind.

"Drink then," he replied, still with the same cold composure.
"Does thou know mw so little Hester Pyrnne? Are my purposes wont to be so shallow? Even if I imagine a scheme of vengeance, what could i do better for my object than to let thee live-than to give the medicines against all harm and peril of life-so that this burning shame may still blaze upon thy bosom?"

"Technologies of easy travel "give us wings; they annihilate the toil and dust of pilgrimage; they spiritualize travel! Transition being so facile, what can be any man’s inducement to tarry in one spot? Why, therefore, should he build a more cumbrous habitation than can readily be carried off with him? Why should he make himself a prisoner for life in brick, and stone, and old worm-eaten timber, when he may just as easily dwell, in one sense, nowhere, — in a better sense, wherever the fit and beautiful shall offer him a home?

Another phenomenon, still more strikingly modern, was a package of lucifer matches, which, in old times, would have been thought actually to borrow their instantaneous flame from the nether fires of Tophet.