Hester Prynne Quotes

“The letter was the symbol of her calling. 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.”

“Thou shalt forgive me! cried Hester, flinging herself on the fallen leaves beside him. Let God punish! Thou shalt forgive!”

“It was none the less a fact, however, that, in the eyes of the very men who spoke thus, the scarlet letter had the effect of the cross on a nun’s bosom.”

“They averred that the symbol was not mere scarlet cloth tinged in an earthly dyepot, but was red-hot with infernal fire, and could be seen glowing all alight whenever Hester Prynne walked abroad in the nighttime. And we must needs say it seared Hester’s bosom so deeply, that perhaps there was more truth in the rumor than our modern incredulity may be inclined to admit.”

“Else, I should long ago have thrown off these garments of mock holiness, and have shown myself to mankind as they will see me at the judgment-seat. Happy are you, Hester, that wear the scarlet letter openly upon your bosom! Mine burns in secret! Thou little knowest what a relief it is, after the torment of a seven years’ cheat, to look into an eye that recognizes me for what I am!”

“She had not known the weight until she felt the freedom.”

“The judgment of God is on me, answered the conscience-stricken priest. It is too mighty for me to struggle with! Heaven would show mercy, rejoined Hester, hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it.”

“Thus the young and pure would be taught to look at her, with the scarlet letter flaming on her breast,—at her, the child of honorable parents,—at her, the mother of a babe, that would hereafter be a woman, —at her, who had once been innocent, —as the figure, the body, the reality of sin”

“It is too deeply branded. Ye cannot take it off. And would that I might endure his agony, as well as mine!”

“And my child must seek a heavenly Father; she shall never know an earthly one!”

“I have thought of death,” said she,—“have wished for it,—would even have prayed for it, were it fit that such as I should pray for anything. Yet if death be in this cup, I bid thee think again, ere thou beholdest me quaff it. See! It is even now at my lips.”

“Thou must gather thine own sunshine. I have none to give thee!”

“Nevertheless,” said the mother, calmly, though growing more pale, “this badge hath taught me— it daily teaches me— it is teaching me at this moment— lessons whereof my child may be the wiser and better, albeit they can profit nothing to myself.”

“He gave her in requital of all things else, which ye had taken from me. She is my happiness!—she is my torture, none the less!

See ye not, she is the scarlet letter, only capable of being loved, and so endowed with a million-fold the power of retribution for my sin?

“Thou knowest,—for thou hast sympathies which these men lack!—thou knowest what is in my heart, and what are a mother’s rights, and how much the stronger they are, when that mother has but her child and the scarlet letter!

“It lies not in the pleasure of the magistrates to take off this badge,” calmly replied Hester.

“Were I worthy to be quit of it, it would fall away of its own nature, or be transformed into something that should speak a different purport.”

“Something that would make me weep, if there were any tears bitter enough for it,”

“You burrow and rankle in his heart!”

“Your clutch is on his life, and you cause him to die daily a living death; and still he knows you not.”

“In permitting this, I have surely acted a false part by the only man to whom the power was left me to be true!”

“Has he not paid thee all?”

“It was I, not less than he. Why hast thou not avenged thyself on me?”

“What may be the result, I know not. But this long debt of confidence, due from me to him, whose bane and ruin I have been, shall at length be paid.

So far as concerns the overthrow or preservation of his fair fame and his earthly state, and perchance his life, he is in thy hands.

Nor do I,—whom the scarlet letter has disciplined to truth, though it be the truth of red-hot iron, entering into the soul,—nor do I perceive such advantage in his living any longer a life of ghastly emptiness, that I shall stoop to implore thy mercy.

There is no good for him,—no good for me,—no good for thee!

There is no path to guide us out of this dismal maze!”

“And I thee,” answered Hester Prynne, “for the hatred that has transformed a wise and just man to a fiend! Wilt thou yet purge it out of thee, and be once more human? If not for his sake, then doubly for thine own! Forgive, and leave his further retribution to the Power that claims it!

I said, but now, that there could be no good event for him, or thee, or me, who are here wandering together in this gloomy maze of evil, and stumbling, at every step, over the guilt wherewith we have strewn our path.

It is not so! There might be good for thee, and thee alone, since thou hast been deeply wronged, and hast it at thy will to pardon. Wilt thou give up that only privilege? Wilt thou reject that priceless benefit?”

“Run away, child,” answered her mother, “and catch the sunshine! It will soon be gone.”

“If thou hadst a sorrow of thine own, the brook might tell thee of it,” answered her mother, “even as it is telling me of mine!

Truth was the one virtue which I might have held fast, and did hold fast, through all extremity; save when thy good,—thy life,—thy fame,—were put in question!

“There is a strange secrecy in his nature,” replied Hester, thoughtfully; “and it has grown upon him by the hidden practices of his revenge.

“He will doubtless seek other means of satiating his dark passion.”

“Thy heart must be no longer under his evil eye!”

“Heaven would show mercy,” rejoined Hester, “hadst thou but the strength to take advantage of it.”

“Doth the universe lie within the compass of yonder town, which only a little time ago was but a leaf-strewn desert, as lonely as this around us?”

“until, some few miles hence, the yellow leaves will show no vestige of the white man’s tread. There thou art free!”

“Is there not shade enough in all this boundless forest to hide thy heart from the gaze of Roger Chillingworth?”

“So brief a journey would bring thee from a world where thou hast been most wretched, to one where thou mayest still be happy!”

And what hast thou to do with all these iron men, and their opinions? They have kept thy better part in bondage too long already!”

The future is yet full of trial and success.

Exchange this false life of thine for a true one.

Give up this name of Arthur Dimmesdale, and make thyself another, and a high one, such as thou canst wear without fear or shame.

Why shouldst thou tarry so much as one other day in the torments that have so gnawed into thy life!—that have made thee feeble to will and to do!—that will leave thee powerless even to repent!

See! With this symbol, I undo it all, and make it as it had never been!”

And see with what natural skill she has made those simple flowers adorn her! Had she gathered pearls, and diamonds, and rubies, in the wood, they could not have become her better.

“The mid-ocean shall take it from my hand, and swallow it up forever!”

So it ever is, whether thus typified or no, that an evil deed invests itself with the character of doom.

Surely, surely, we have ransomed one another, with all this woe!