Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes

30 Sourced Quotes

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

Nathaniel Parker Willis
He who binds
His soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven.

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

Nathaniel Parker Willis
The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
But he who never sins can little boast Compared to him who goes and sins no more!

Nathaniel Parker Willis
It is godlike to unloose the spirit, and forget yourself in thought.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

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

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

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

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

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
For it stirs the blood in an old man's heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice
And the light of a pleasant eye.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
The smallest pebble in the well of truth has its peculiar meaning, and will stand when man's best monuments have passed away.

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

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

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
On the cross-beam under the Old South bell The nest of a pigeon is built well. In summer and winter that bird is there, Out and in with the morning air.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasant scents the noses.

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

Nathaniel Parker Willis
Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for him!
Not for him who, departing, leaves millions in tears!
Not for him who has died full of honor and years!
Not for him who ascended Fame's ladder so high:
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
The sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven
By man is cursed alway.

Nathaniel Parker Willis
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.

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

Nathaniel Parker Willis