Tuesday, 10 January 2012

nathaniel hawthorne on providence, human happiness and breakfast

Having shamefully only read 'The Scarlet Letter' for the first time last week and enjoyed it thoroughly I just this evening reached the final page of another novel he wrote a year later in 1851: 'The House of the Seven Gables'. Rather than attempt any form of review in which I doubt any of the readers of this blog would have the slightest interest, I will instead reproduce below a handful of memorable quotations from the text that you might enjoy.

As a general rule, Providence seldom vouchsafes to mortals any more than just that degree of encouragement which suffices to keep them at a reasonably full exertion of their powers

Life, within doors, has few pleasanter prospects than a neatly arranged and well-provisioned breakfast-table.

The greatest possible stumbling-blocks in the path of human happiness and improvement are those heaps of bricks and stones...fastened together with spike-nails, which men painfully contrive for their own torment, and call them house and home.

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