Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes

I'm weary of my lonely but
And of its blasted tree,
The very lake is like my lot,
So silent constantly
I've liv'd amid the forest gloom
Until I almost fear
When will the thrilling voices come
My spirit thirsts to hear?

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

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

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.

The perfect world, by Adam trod,
Was the first temple
built by God
His fiat laid the corner stone,
And heaved its pillars, one by one.

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

The taste forever refines in the study of women.

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

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

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

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

Some noble spirits mistake despair for content.

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

Your love in a cottage is hungry,
Your vine is a nest for flies-
Your milkmaid shocks the Graces,
And simplicity talks of pies!
You lie down to your shady slumber
And wake with a bug in your ear,
And your damsel that walks in the morning
Is shod like a mountaineer.

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.

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

Vulgarity is more obvious in satin than in homespun.

There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light.

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.

Temptation hath a music for all ears.

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

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

Press on! for in the grave there is no work and no device. Press on! while yet you may.

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!

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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.

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.

Youth is beautiful; its friendship is precious; the intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn and stained harness of older life.

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

How beautiful it is for a man to die
Upon the walls of Zion! to be called
Like a watch-worn and weary sentinel,
To put his armour off, and rest in heaven!

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

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

The sin forgiven by Christ in HeavenBy man is cursed alway.

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

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.

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.