The Artist of the Beautiful Quotes

“This so frequent abortion of man's dearest projects must be taken as a proof that the deeds of earth, however etherealized by piety or genius, are without value, except as exercises and manifestations of the spirit. In heaven, all ordinary thought is higher and more melodious than Milton's song. Then, would he add another verse to any strain that he had left unfinished here?”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Artist of the Beautiful

“The towns-people had one comprehensive explanation of all these singularities. Owen Warland had gone mad! How universally efficacious--how satisfactory, too, and soothing to the injured sensibility of narrowness and dulness--is this easy method of accounting for whatever lies beyond the world's most ordinary scope! From St. Paul's days down to our poor little Artist of the Beautiful, the same talisman had been applied to the elucidation of all mysteries in the words or deeds of men who spoke or acted too wisely or too well.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Artist of the Beautiful

“Go, Annie," murmured he; "I have deceived myself, and must suffer for it. I yearned for sympathy, and thought, and fancied, and dreamed that you might give it me; but you lack the talisman, Annie, that should admit you into my secrets.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Artist of the Beautiful

“It has been delicately wrought," said the artist, calmly. "As I told you, it has imbibed a spiritual essence--call it magnetism, or what you will. In an atmosphere of doubt and mockery its exquisite susceptibility suffers torture, as does the soul of him who instilled his own life into it. It has already lost its beauty; in a few moments more its mechanism would be irreparably injured.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Artist of the Beautiful