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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.”
