AC

“But it was a remarkable attribute of this garb, and indeed, of the child's whole appearance, that it irresistibly and inevitably reminded the beholder of the token which Hester Prynne was doomed to wear upon her bosom. It was the scarlet letter in another form: the scarlet letter endowed with life!”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“Here, there was the taint of deepest sin in the most sacred quality of human life, working such effect, that the world was only the darker for this woman's beauty, and the more lost for the infant that she had borne.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“The public is despotic in its temper; it is capable of denying common justice when too strenuously demanded as a right; but quite as frequently it awards more than justice, when the appeal is made, as despots love to have it made, entirely to its generosity.”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter

“The horrible ugliness of this exposure of a sick and guilty heart to the very eye that would gloat over it!”
― Nathaniel Hawthorne, The Scarlet Letter