The best The Scarlet Letter quotes

This feeble and most sensitive of spirits could do neither, yet continually did one thing or another, which intertwined, in the same inextricable knot, the agony of heaven-defying guilt and vain repentance.

- Reverend Arthur Dimmesdale

We dream in our waking moments, and walk in our sleep.

The days of the far-off future would toil onward, still with the same burden for her to take up and bear along with her.

It is remarkable that persons who speculate the most boldly often conform with the most perfect quietude to the external regulations of society.

Love, whether newly born or aroused from a deathlike slumber, must always create sunshine, filling the heart so full of radiance, that it overflows upon the outward world.

When he found the eyes of Hester Prynne fastened on his own, and saw that she appeared to recognize him, he slowly and calmly raised his finger, made a gesture with it in the air, and laid it on his lips.

I have laughed, in bitterness and agony of heart, at the contrast between what I seem and what I am!

So speaking, she undid the clasp that fastened the scarlet letter.

No man, for any considerable period, can wear one face to himself and another to the multitude, without finally getting bewildered as to which may be the true.