Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes
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.
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.
Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart- rendered to God for his goodness.
Maturity is most rapid in the low latitudes, where pineapples and women most do thrive.
Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth!
It is the month of June, The month of leaves and roses, When pleasant sights salute the eyes, And pleasant scents the noses.
I knelt, and with the fervor of a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told my love.
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.
If there is anything that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of ill, it is human love.
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.
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 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.
Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own.
T is the work of many a dark hour, many a prayer, to bring the heart back from an infant gone.
The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.
The smallest pebble in the well of truth has its peculiar meaning, and will stand when man's best monuments have passed away.
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.
Flirtation is a circulating library, in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume.
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.
A lamp is lit in woman's eye; that souls, else lost on earth, remember angels by.
Ah me! the world is full of meetings such as this,--a thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply, and sudden partings after!
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.
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.
Youth is beautiful; its friendship is precious; the intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn and stained harness of older life.
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.
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.
There is no divining-rod whose dip shall tell us at twenty what we shall most relish at thirty.
The Italians say that a beautiful woman by her smiles draws tears from our purse.
But he who never sins can little boast Compared to him who goes and sins no more!
The expressive word "quiet" defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street.
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.