How we cite our quotes: (Chapter.Paragraph)
Quote #1
But on one side of the portal, and rooted almost at the threshold, was a wild rosebush, covered, in this month of June, with its delicate gems, which might be imagined to offer their fragrance and fragile beauty to the prisoner as he went in, and to the condemned criminal as he came forth to his doom, in token that the deep heart of Nature could pity and be kind to him. (1.3)
Um, maybe. Or you could just see this little rosebush as a mockery. If we were heading off to be executed or publicly shamed, we might want everything to look as miserable as we felt.
Quote #2
But the proprietor appeared already to have relinquished as hopeless the effort to perpetuate on this side of the Atlantic, in a hard soil and amid the close struggle for subsistence, the native English taste for ornamental gardening. (7.20)
Nature on this side of the Atlantic is so tough that even the rich people can't manage to have nice gardens. (Give it time, guys.)
Quote #3
“Wilt thou go with us tonight? There will be a merry company in the forest; and I well-nigh promised the Black Man that comely Hester Prynne should make one.” (8.39)
Fun! We love a good Satanic party in the woods. After all, you can't exactly have a Satanic party in your living room. The tone just isn't right.
Quote #4
In his Indian captivity, moreover, he had gained much knowledge of the properties of native herbs and roots; nor did he conceal from his patients, that these simple medicines, Nature’s boon to the untutored savage, had quite as large a share of his own confidence as the European pharmacopoeia, which so many learned doctors had spent centuries in elaborating. (9.2)
Considering that the European system of medicine at this time mostly consisted of bloodletting and chopping off limbs, yeah: probably almost anything would have been better.
Quote #5
For the sake of the minister’s health, and to enable the leech to gather plants with healing balm in them, they took long walks on the seashore or in the forest; mingling various talk with the plash and murmur of the waves, and the solemn wind anthem among in treetops. (9.12)
Check out the way Chillingworth's and Dimmesdale's "various talk" sounds just like another kind of natural noise, like the "murmur" of the waves or the "solemn" sounds of the wind. Man and nature don't have to be opposed—they can be in harmony, too.
Quote #6
Would he not suddenly sink into the earth, leaving a barren and blasted spot, where, in due course of time, would be seen deadly nightshade, dogwood, henbane, and whatever else of vegetable wickedness the climate could produce, all flourishing with hideous luxuriance? (15.1)
Nature isn't all rosebushes and dewdrops. It's also poison. Keep that in mind next time someone tells to be one with nature.
Quote #7
It straggled onward into the mystery of the primevil forest. This hemmed it in so narrowly, and stood so black and dense on either side, and imposed such imperfect glimpses of the sky above, that, to Hester’s mind, it imaged not amiss the moral wilderness in which she had so long been wandering. (16.3)
Descriptions of the forest that the European settlers encountered are pretty intense. It's hard to imagine now, but at one time almost all of the Eastern United States was covered with forest, including 200-foot tall pines—which were quickly turned into masts for the English navy. By the 18th century, most of these forests we gone. In fact, the land that Hawthorne knew might have been even more deforested than it is today, since a lot of forest land has been replanted. This "primeval forest" is a place where people can shed some of those pesky trappings of civilization.
Quote #8
All these giant trees and boulders of granite seemed intent on making a mystery of the course of this small brook; fearing, perhaps, that, with its never-ceasing loquacity, it should whisper tales out of the heart of the heart of the old forest whence it flowed, or mirror its revelations on the smooth surface of the pool. (16.23)
The woods are alive with the sound of music—or, at least of secret. Here, everything in the forest seems to be talking, listening, and taking note of Hester and Dimmesdale's conversation. Are these illicit conversations some of the secrets that the forest keeps?
Quote #9
Pearl resembled the brook, inasmuch as the current of her life gushed from a wellspring as mysterious, and had flown through scenes shadowed as heavily with gloom. But, unlike the little stream, she danced and sparkled and prattled airily along her course. (16.25)
Okay, we get it: Pearl has a close connection to the natural world. Is that because she grew up on the edge of the forest? Or is she actually a little elf-child?
Quote #10
She thought of the dim forest, with its little dell of solitude, and love, and anguish, and the mossy tree-trunk, where, sitting hand in hand, they had mingled their sad and passionate talk with the melancholy murmur of the brook. How deeply they had known each other then! And was this the man? She hardly knew him now! (22.6)
In town, appearances matter: Hester and Dimmesdale aren't officially allowed to know each other, and so they don't. But when they met in the forest, they "had known each other" deeply. It's the kind of human connection that they can't make in town, where houses and rules dictate the kinds of meetings people can have.