Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes
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Nature has thrown a veil of modest beauty over maidenhood and moss-roses.
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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.
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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.
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Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins
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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.
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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?
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I knelt, and with the fervor of a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told my love.
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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.
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The position you hold and the work you are now doing.
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The ear in man and beast is an evidence of blood and high breeding.
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The highest triumph of art, is the truest presentation of nature.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth!
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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.
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Blessed are the joymakers.
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The taste forever refines in the study of women.
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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.
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Some noble spirits mistake despair for content.
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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.
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Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own.
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How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.
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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.