It is a good lesson --though it may often be a hard one --for a man who has dreamed of literary fame, and of making for himself a rank among the world's dignitaries by such means, to step aside out of the narrow circle in which his claims are recognized, and to find how utterly devoid of all significance, beyond that circle, is all that he achieves, and all he aims at.
More Quotes from Nathaniel Hawthorne:
Great men have to be lifted upon the shoulders of the whole world, in order to conceive their great ideas, or perform their great deeds.Nathaniel Hawthorne
Happiness, in this world, if it comes at all, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us on a wild-goose chase, and it is never attained.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The greatest obstacle to being heroic is the doubt whether one may not be going to prove one's self a fool; the truest heroism is to resist the doubt; and the profoundest wisdom, to know when it ought to be resisted, and when it be obeyed.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
You can get assent to almost any proposition so long as you are not going to do anything about it.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
The Pyncheon Elm, throughout its great circumference, was all alive, and full of the morning sunand a sweet-tempered little breeze, which lingered within this verdant sphere, and set a thousand leaftytongues a-whispering all at once. This ages tree appeared to have suffered nothing from the gale. It has kept its boughs unshattered, and its full complement of leaves, and the whole in perfect verdure, except a single branch, that, by the earlier change with which the elm-tree sometimes prophesies the autumn, had been transmuted to bright gold.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Life is made up of marble and mud.
Nathaniel Hawthorne
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Based on Topics: Fame Quotes, Man QuotesBased on Keywords: dignitaries
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