Chapter 1, page 42
“On one side of the portal, and rooted almost at
the threshold, was a wild rosebush, which might
be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile
beauty to the prisoner as he went it. . . In token
that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be
kind to him. . . Finding it so directly on the
threshold of our narrative. . .we could hardly do
otherwise than pluck one of it’s flowers and
present it to the reader. It may serve. . . To
symbolize some sweet moral blossom.”
Chapter 2, page 44
Of the five wives who judge Hester at the
scaffold--“Every successive mother has
transmitted to her child a fainter bloom, a
more delicate and briefer beauty, and a
slighter physical frame, it not a character
of less force and solidity, than her own.”
Chapter 3, page 57
“They were, doubtless, good men, just, and
sage. But, out of the whole human family,
it would not have been easy to select the
same number of wise and virtuous
persons who should be less capable of
sitting in judgment on an erring woman’s
heart.”
Chapter 5, Page 70-71
“It may seem marvelous that this woman should
still call that place her home, where, and where
only, she must needs be the type of shame. . .It
was as if a new birth, with stronger assimilations
than the first, had converted the forestland, still
so uncongenial to every other pilgrim and
wanderer, into Hester Prynne’s wild and dreary
but lifelong home. . .The chain that bound her
here was of iron links, and galling to her inmost
soul, but could never be broken.
Chapter 5, page 76
“She [Hester] felt or fancied, then, that the scarlet
letter had endowed her with a new sense. She
shuddered to believe. . . that it gave her a
sympathetic knowledge of the hidden sin in
other hearts. . . Could they be other than the
insidious whispers of the bad angel, who would
fain have persuaded the struggling woman, as
yet only half his victim, that the outward guise of
purity was but a lie, and that, if truth were
everywhere to be shown, a scarlet letter would
blaze forth on many a bosom besides Hester
Prynne’s?”
Chapter 5, page 73
“Her [Hester’s] needlework was seen on the
ruff of the Governor; military men wore it
on their scarfs, and the minister on his
band; it decked the baby’s little cap; it was
shut up, to be mildewed and moulder
away, in the coffins of the dead. But it was
not recorded that, in a single instance, her
skill was called in aid to embroider the
white veil which was to cover the pure
blushes of a bride.”
Chapter 6, pages 82-85
“Hester could not help questioning. . .
whether Pearl was a human child. She
seemed rather an airy sprite. . .Pearl was
born an outcast of the infantile world. An
imp of evil, emblem and product of sin.”
Chapter 8, page 99
“ ‘Pearl,’ said he, with great solemnity. . .Canst
thou tell me who made thee?’. . . Now Pearl
knew well enough who made her. . .But that
perversity, which all children have more or less
of. . . took thorough possession of her and
closed her lips. . . After putting her fingers in her
mouth, with many ungracious refusals to answer
good Mr. Wilson’s question, the child finally
announced that she had not been made at all,
but had been plucked by her mother off the bush
of wild roses that grew by the prison door.”
Chapter 10, page 119
• Before Roger Chillingworth could answer, they heard the
clear, wild laughter of a young child’s voice proceeding
from the adjacent burial ground. . . The minister beheld
Hester Prynne and little Pearl passing along the
footpath. . . Pearl looked as beautiful as the day, but was
in one of those moods of perverse merriment . . . She
now skipped irreverently from one grave to another; until,
coming to the . . .armorial tombstone of a departed
worthy. . .she began to dance upon it. . . Little Pearl
paused to gather the prickly burrs from a tall burdock
which grew beside the tomb. . . She arranged them
along the lines of the scarlet letter that decorated the
maternal bosom, to which the burrs, as their nature was,
tenaciously adhered.
Chapter 10, page 123-124
“The physician advanced directly in front of
his patient, laid his hand upon his bosom,
and thrust aside the vestment, that,
hitherto, had always covered it. . .After a
brief pause, the physician turned away.
But what with a wild look of wonder, joy,
and horror! . . . at that moment of his
ecstasy, he would have no need to ask
how Satan comports himself when a
precious human soul is lost to heaven.”