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What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self! — Nathaniel Hawthorne

Novel

What other dungeon is so dark as one's own heart! What jailer so inexorable as one's self!

Nathaniel Hawthorne
The House of Seven Gables · 1851
★ 3.6
Other tags relating to this quote
Topic
Existential solitudeInner lifeSelf-criticism
Medium
Novel
Time
1851
Person
Nathaniel Hawthorne
Provenance
Current citation
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables, edited by Robert S. Levine. W. W. Norton & Company, 2020, ch. 11.
Original citation
Hawthorne, Nathaniel. The House of the Seven Gables: A Romance. Boston: Ticknor, Reed, and Fields, 1851, ch. 11.

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The bonds between ourselves and another person exist only in our minds. Memory as it grows fainter loosens them, and notwithstanding the illusion by which we want to be duped and which, out of love, friendship, politeness, deference, duty, we dupe other people, we exist alone. Man is the creature who cannot escape from himself, who knows other people only in himself, and when he asserts the contrary, he is lying.

Marcel Proust
In Search of Lost Time · 1922
Another quote aboutTopic·Existential solitude

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