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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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 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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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 ear in man and beast is an evidence of blood and high breeding.
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The position you hold and the work you are now doing.
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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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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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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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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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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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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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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!
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Blessed are the joymakers.
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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.
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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.
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How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.
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Some noble spirits mistake despair for content.
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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.