Quotes from The Scarlet Letter

17 notable lines from Nathaniel Hawthorne · 1850

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.

Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

  1. 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.

    The narrator, on Dimmesdale (Chapter XX, "The Minister in a Maze")

  2. On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold-thread, appeared the letter A.

    The narrator, on Hester Prynne (Chapter II, "The Market-Place")

  3. 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 narrator's closing moral (Chapter XXIV, "Conclusion")

  4. The founders of a new colony, whatever Utopia of human virtue and happiness they might originally project, have invariably recognized it among their earliest practical necessities to allot a portion of the virgin soil as a cemetery, and another portion as the site of a prison.

    The narrator (Chapter I, "The Prison-Door")

  5. It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom.

    The narrator (Chapter XXIV, "Conclusion")

  6. What we did had a consecration of its own. We felt it so! We said so to each other!

    Hester Prynne to Dimmesdale (Chapter XVII, "The Pastor and His Parishioner")

  7. ON A FIELD, SABLE, THE LETTER A, GULES.

    The shared epitaph of Hester and Dimmesdale (Chapter XXIV, "Conclusion")

  8. It was the scarlet letter in another form; the scarlet letter endowed with life!

    The narrator, on Pearl (Chapter VII, "The Governor's Hall")

  9. 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.

    The narrator, on Hester Prynne (Chapter XVIII, "A Flood of Sunshine")

  10. The world's law was no law for her mind.

    The narrator, on Hester Prynne (Chapter XIII, "Another View of Hester")

  11. A throng of bearded men, in sad-colored garments, and gray, steeple-crowned hats, intermixed with women, some wearing hoods and others bareheaded, was assembled in front of a wooden edifice, the door of which was heavily timbered with oak, and studded with iron spikes.

    Opening lines (Chapter I, "The Prison-Door")

  12. Love, whether newly born, or aroused from a death-like slumber, must always create a sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.

    The narrator (Chapter XVIII, "A Flood of Sunshine")

  13. She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.

    Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

  14. It may serve, let us hope, to symbolize some sweet moral blossom, that may be found along the track, or relieve the darkening close of a tale of human frailty and sorrow.

    The narrator, on the wild rose-bush (Chapter I, "The Prison-Door")

  15. It is a curious subject of observation, how often the first symptoms of disease are mistaken for recovery.

    Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

  16. We impute it, therefore, solely to the disease in his own eye and heart, that the minister, looking upward to the zenith, beheld there the appearance of an immense letter,—the letter A,—marked out in lines of dull red light.

    The narrator, on Dimmesdale's vision (Chapter XII, "The Minister's Vigil")