It was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on creating a semblance of a world out of airy matter . . . This wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus make it a bright transparency . . . to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me was dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there . . . These perceptions came too late . . . I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all.

Famous Quotes / Nathaniel Hawthorne

Authors: A B C D E F G H I J K L M N O P Q R S T U V W X Y Z

Nathaniel Hawthorne: "It was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on creating a semblance of a world out of airy matter . . . This wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus make it a bright transparency . . . to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me was dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there . . . These perceptions came too late . . . I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all."

Quotations about

Airy	Another	Attempt	Back
Because	Become	Better	Book
Bright	Ceased	Characters	Commonplace
Conversant	Creating	Customs	Daily
Deeper	Diffuse	Dull	Effort
Essays	Fathomed	Fault	Fling
Folly	Good	Hidden	Imagination
Import	Incidents	Indestructible	Insist
Into	Intrusively	Late	Life
Make	Materiality	Matter	Mine
Myself	Opaque	Ordinary	Page
Perceptions	Petty	Poor	Pressing
Resolutely	Seek	Semblance	Spread
Substance	Surveyor	Tales	These
Thought	Through	Thus	Today
Tolerably	Transparency	True	Upon
Value	Wearisome	Wiser	World
Write	Writer

Quotes by Power Quotations

It was a folly, with the materiality of this daily life pressing so intrusively upon me, to attempt to fling myself back into another age; or to insist on creating a semblance of a world out of airy matter . . . This wiser effort would have been, to diffuse thought and imagination through the opaque substance of to-day, and thus make it a bright transparency . . . to seek resolutely the true and indestructible value that lay hidden in the petty and wearisome incidents and ordinary characters with which I was now conversant. The fault was mine. The page of life that was spread out before me was dull and commonplace, only because I had not fathomed its deeper import. A better book than I shall ever write was there . . . These perceptions came too late . . . I had ceased to be a writer of tolerably poor tales and essays, and had become a tolerably good Surveyor of the Customs. That was all. - Nathaniel Hawthorne