The Complete Writings of Nathaniel Hawthorne: The scarlet letter

Передня обкладинка
Houghton, Mifflin, 1900

З цієї книги

Зміст

Інші видання - Показати все

Загальні терміни та фрази

Популярні уривки

Сторінка 292 - Among many morals which press upon us from the poor minister's miserable experience, we put only this into a sentence: - 'Be true! Be true! Be true! Show freely to the world, if not your worst, yet some trait whereby the worst may be inferred!
Сторінка 221 - For years past she had looked from this estranged point of view at human institutions, and whatever priests or legislators had established; criticizing all with hardly more reverence than the Indian would feel for the clerical band, the judicial robe, the pillory, the gallows, the fireside, or the church. The tendency of her fate and fortunes had been to set her free. The scarlet letter was her passport into regions where other women dared not tread.
Сторінка 52 - There can be no outrage, methinks, against our common nature, — whatever be the delinquencies of the individual, — no outrage more flagrant than to forbid the culprit to hide his face for shame, as it was the essence of this punishment to do.
Сторінка 172 - Such helpfulness was found in her,— so much power to do, and power to sympathize, — that many people refused to interpret the scarlet A by its original signification. They said that it meant Able; so strong was Hester Prynne, with a woman's strength.
Сторінка 44 - The rust on the ponderous iron-work of its oaken door looked more antique than anything else in the New World. Like all that pertains to crime, it seemed never to have known a youthful era.
Сторінка 50 - On the breast of her gown, in fine red cloth, surrounded with an elaborate embroidery and fantastic flourishes of gold thread, appeared the letter A. It was so artistically done, and with so much fertility and gorgeous luxuriance of fancy, that it had all the effect of a last and fitting decoration to the apparel which she wore, and which was of a splendor in accordance with the taste of the age, but greatly beyond what was allowed by the sumptuary regulations of the colony.
Сторінка 8 - What is he?" murmurs one gray shadow of my forefathers to the other. "A writer of storybooks! What kind of a business in life — what mode of glorifying God, or being serviceable to mankind in his day and generation — may that be? Why, the degenerate fellow might as well have been a fiddler!
Сторінка 80 - Hester's soul; so that, oftentimes, she could scarcely refrain, yet always did refrain, from covering the symbol with her hand. But then, again, an accustomed eye had likewise its own anguish to inflict. Its cool stare of familiarity was intolerable. From first to last, in short, Hester Prynne had always this dreadful agony in feeling a human eye upon the token; the spot never grew callous; it seemed, on the contrary, to grow more sensitive with daily torture.
Сторінка 226 - ... trunks of the solemn trees. The objects that had made a shadow hitherto, embodied the brightness now. The course of the little brook might be traced by its merry gleam afar into the wood's heart of mystery, which had become a mystery of joy. Such was the sympathy of Nature — that wild, heathen Nature of the forest, never subjugated by human law, nor illumined by higher truth...
Сторінка 216 - Hester," replied the minister, at length, with a deep utterance, out of an abyss of sadness, but no anger. " I freely forgive you now. May God forgive us both ! We are not, Hester, the worst sinners in the world. There is one worse than even the polluted priest ! That old man's revenge has been blacker than my sin. He has violated, in cold blood, the sanctity of a human heart. Thou and I, Hester, never did so !

Бібліографічна інформація