Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Religion and art spring from the same root and are close kin. Economics and art are strangers."

"Our most intimate friend is not he to whom we show the worst, but the best of our nature."

"We sometimes congratulate ourselves at the moment of waking from a troubled dream it may be so the moment after death."

"The only sensible ends of literature are, first, the pleasurable toil of writing second, the gratification of one's family and friends and lastly, the solid cash."

"Words - so innocent and powerless as they are, as standing in a dictionary, how potent for good and evil they become in the hands of one who knows how to combine them."

"Nobody, I think, ought to read poetry, or look at pictures or statues, who cannot find a great deal more in them than the poet or artist has actually expressed. Their highest merit is suggestiveness."