Nathaniel Hawthorne

Vanity, it may be, chose to mortify itself, by putting on, for ceremonials of pomp and state, the garments that had been wrought by her sinful hands.

the infant "Pearl," as being of great price—purchased with all she had—her mother's only treasure

became spiritually adapted to whatever drama occupied the stage of her inner world.

may appear singular, and, indeed, not a little ludicrous, that an affair of this kind, which in later days would have been referred to no higher jurisdiction than that of the select men of the town, should then have been a question publicly discussed, and on which statesmen of eminence took sides.

During that term he was to be the property of his master, and as much a commodity of bargain and sale as an ox, or a joint-stool.

we suppose this interview betwixt Mistress Hibbins and Hester Prynne to be authentic, and not a parable

was as if she had been made afresh out of new elements, and must perforce be permitted to live her own life, and be a law unto herself without her eccentricities being reckoned to her for a crime.

scroll so wide might not be deemed too expensive for Providence to write a people's doom upon.

She assumed a freedom of speculation, then common enough on the other side of the Atlantic, but which our forefathers, had they known it, would have held to be a deadlier crime than that stigmatised by the scarlet letter

No golden light had ever been so precious as