Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes

The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.

Some noble spirits mistake despair for content.

Spring is a beautiful piece of work; and not to be in the country to see it done is the not realizing what glorious masters we are, and how cheerfully, minutely, and unflaggingly the fair fingers of the season broider the world for us.

Maturity is most rapid in the low latitudes, where pineapples and women most do thrive.

Wisdom, sits alone, topmost in heaven: she is its light, its God; and in the heart of man she sits as high, though groveling minds forget her oftentimes, seeing but this world's idols.

Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth!

I knelt, and with the fervor of a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told my love.

A lamp is lit in woman's eye; that souls, else lost on earth, remember angels by.

The lily and the rose in her fair face striving for precedence.

Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins

There is to me a daintiness about early flowers that touches me like poetry. They blow out with such a simple loveliness among the common herbs of pastures, and breathe their lives so unobtrusively, like hearts whose beatings are too gentle for the world.

Blessed are the joymakers.

Temptation hath a music for all ears.

The ear in man and beast is an evidence of blood and high breeding.

Flirtation is a circulating library, in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume.

The position you hold and the work you are now doing.

Nature's noblemen are everywhere,--in town and out of town, gloved and rough-handed, rich and poor. Prejudice against a lord, because he is a lord, is losing the chance of finding a good fellow, as much as prejudice against a ploughman because he is a ploughman.

There is no divining-rod whose dip shall tell us at twenty what we shall most relish at thirty.

The expressive word "quiet" defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street.

Gentleness is the great point to be obtained in the study of manners.

There is a gentle element, and man may breathe it with a calm, unruffled soul, and drink its living waters, till his heart is pure; and this is human happiness.

The taste forever refines in the study of women.

Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own.

The Italians say that a beautiful woman by her smiles draws tears from our purse.

Vulgarity is more obvious in satin than in homespun.

Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart- rendered to God for his goodness.

O, when the heart is, full, when bitter thoughts come crowding thickly up for utterance, and the poor common words of courtesy are such a very mockery, how much the bursting heart may pour itself in prayer!

The highest triumph of art, is the truest presentation of nature.

The night is made for tenderness,--so still that the low whisper, scarcely audible, is heard like music,--and so deeply pure that the fond thought is chastened as it springs and on the lip made holy.

One gets, sensitive about losing mornings after getting a little used to them with living in a country. Each one of these endlessly varied daybreaks is an opera but once performed.

If there is anything that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of ill, it is human love.

The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.

Ah me! the world is full of meetings such as this,--a thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply, and sudden partings after!

The smallest pebble in the well of truth has its peculiar meaning, and will stand when man's best monuments have passed away.

Nature has thrown a veil of modest beauty over maidenhood and moss-roses.

T is the work of many a dark hour, many a prayer, to bring the heart back from an infant gone.

We may believe that we shall know each other's forms hereafter; and in the bright fields of the better land call the lost dead to us.

It is godlike to unloose the spirit, and forget yourself in thought.

How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.

One lamp — thy mother’s love — amid the stars Shall lift its pure flame changeless, and before The throne of God, burn through eternity - Holy — as it was lit and lent thee here.

The soul of man createth its own destiny of power; and as the trial is intenser here, his being hath a nobler strength in heaven.

The rain is playing its soft pleasant tune fitfully on the skylight, and the shade of the fast-flying clouds across my book passed with delicate change.

A flirt is like a dipper attached to a hydrant; every one is at liberty to drink from it, but no one desires to carry it away.

The children of the poor are so apt to look as if the rich would have been over-blest with such! Alas for the angel capabilities, interrupted so soon with care, and with after life so sadly unfulfilled.

Like Melrose Abbey, large cities should especially be viewed by moonlight.

I have unlearned contempt; it is a sin that is engendered earliest in the soul, and doth beset it like a poison worm feeding on all its beauty.