Top 66 Quotes & Sayings by Nathaniel Parker Willis
Explore popular quotes and sayings by an American author Nathaniel Parker Willis.
Last updated on April 14, 2025.
At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.
Press on! for in the grave there is no work and no device. Press on! while yet you may.
Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart rendered to God for his goodness.
The lily and the rose in her fair face striving for precedence.
The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.
If there is anything that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of ill, it is human love.
He who binds his soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven.
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.
It is godlike to unloose the spirit, and forget yourself in thought.
The position you hold and the work you are now doing.
Gentleness is the great point to be obtained in the study of manners.
The Spring is here--the delicate footed May,
With its slight fingers full of leaves and flowers,
And with it comes a thirst to be away.
In lovelier scenes to pass these sweeter hours.
Blessed are the joymakers.
How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.
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.
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.
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.
Some noble spirits mistake despair for content.
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.
Ah me! the world is full of meetings such as this,--a thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply, and sudden partings after!
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.
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.
The smallest pebble in the well of truth has its peculiar meaning, and will stand when man's best monuments have passed away.
Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart- rendered to God for his goodness.
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!
The sin forgiven by Christ in HeavenBy man is cursed alway.
I love to go and mingle with the young
In the gay festal room--when every heart
Is beating faster than the merry tune,
And their blue eyes are restless, and their lips
Parted with eager joy, and their round cheeks
Flush'd with the beautiful motion of the dance.
But he who never sins can little boast Compared to him who goes and sins no more!
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.
Temptation hath a music for all ears.
The taste forever refines in the study of women.
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?
Vulgarity is more obvious in satin than in homespun.
Like Melrose Abbey, large cities should especially be viewed by moonlight.
The Italians say that a beautiful woman by her smiles draws tears from our purse.
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.
He who binds
His soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven.
A lamp is lit in woman's eye; that souls, else lost on earth, remember angels by.
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.
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.
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.
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.
They are all up — the innumerable stars—
And hold their place in heaven. ...
There they stand,
Shining in order, like a living hymn
Written in light, awaking at the breath
Of the celestial dawn, and praising
Him Who made them, with the harmony of sphere.
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 soul of man createth its own destiny.
There is no divining-rod whose dip shall tell us at twenty what we shall most relish at thirty.
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 ear in man and beast is an evidence of blood and high breeding.
The dust is old upon my "sandal-shoon,"
And still I am a pilgrim; I have roved
From wild America to Bosphor's waters,
And worshipp'd at innumerable shrines
Of beauty; and the painter's art, to me,
And sculpture, speak as with a living tongue,
And of dead kingdoms, I recall the soul,
Sitting amid their ruins.
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 expressive word "quiet" defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street.
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.
Flirtation is a circulating library, in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume.
If e'er I win a parting token,
'Tis something that has lost its power--
A chain that has been used and broken,
A ruin'd glove, a faded flower;
Something that makes my pleasure less,
Something that means--forgetfulness.
I knelt, and with the fervor of a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told my love.
The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.
Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins
It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasant scents the noses.
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