Tuesday, August 23, 2011

Nathaniel Hawthorne


It is a curious subject of observation and inquiry, whether hatred and love be not the same thing at bottom. Each, in its utmost development, supposes a high degree of intimacy and heart-knowledge; each renders one individual dependent for the food of his affections and spiritual life upon another; each leaves the passionate lover, or the no less passionate hater, forlorn and desolate by the withdrawal of his object.

From his 1850 novel, The Scarlet Letter.  Elie Wiesel once said the opposite of love is not hate, but indifference.  I think Hawthorne would have agreed with that.

Lilian Gish as Hester Prynne (1926)


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