Mans own youth is the worlds youth; at least, he feels as if it were, and imagines that the earths granite substance is something not yet hardened, and which he can mould into whatever shape he likes. So it was with Holgrave. He could talk sagely about the worlds old age, but never actually believed what he said; he was a young man still, and therefore looked upon the worldthat graybearded and wrinkled profligate, decrepit, without being venerableas a tender stripling, capable of being improved into all that it ought to be, but scarcely yet had shown the remotest promise of becoming. He had that sense, or inward prophecy, which a young man had better never have been born than not to have, and a mature man had better die at once than utterly to relinquish,that we are not doomed to creep on forever in the old bad way, but that, this very now, there are the harbingers abroad of a golden era, to be accomplished in his own lifetime.
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About Nathaniel Hawthorne
Nathaniel Hawthorne.