Nathaniel Hawthorne

"Happiness is like a butterfly which, when pursued, is always beyond our grasp, but, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

"Life is made up of marble and mud."

"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."

"Happiness in this world, when it comes, comes incidentally. Make it the object of pursuit, and it leads us a wild-goose chase, and is never attained. Follow some other object, and very possibly we may find that we have caught happiness without dreaming of it."

"Happiness is a butterfly, which when pursued, is always just beyond your grasp, but which, if you will sit down quietly, may alight upon you."

"Selfishness is one of the qualities apt to inspire love."

"Every individual has a place to fill in the world and is important in some respect, whether he chooses to be so or not."

"Easy reading is damn hard writing."

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

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

"Oh, for the years I have not lived, but only dreamed of living."