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WILLIS, Nathaniel Parker Quotes
(1806-1867), American poet and journalist
If there is any thing that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of evil, it is a pure human love.
How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.
There aid so few that resist the allurements and luxuries of the table, that the usual civilities at a meal are very like being politely assisted to the grave.
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.
Such is the force of envy and ill-nature, that the failings of good men are more published to the world than their good deeds; and one fault of a well-deserving man shall meet with more reproaches than all his virtues will with praise.
We believe that we shall know each other's forms hereafter, and, in the bright fields of the better land, shall call the lost dead to us.
Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart—rendered to God for his goodness.
The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.
Intellect—the starlight of the brain.
For woman's love—I mean self-love, is boundless, just like the sea, and sometimes quite as groundless.
Pitch a lucky man, into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth.
Nature has thrown a veil of modest beauty over maidenhood and moss roses.
The soul of man createth its own destiny of power; and as the trial is intenser here, his being hath a nobler strength of heaven.
Ah me! the world is full of meetings such as this,—a thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply, and sudden partings after!
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 is made holy.
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 rain is playing its soft pleasant tune fitfully on the skylight, and the shade of the fast-flying clouds passes with delicate change across my book.
There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light.
No degree of temptation justifies any degree of sin.
Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins.
Twilight hour! whose mantle is the drapery of dreams, and who hast ever been in poetry life's holy time; thou wert wont to steal upon us, as thy sandals were of dew! how sadly comes the rustle of thy step in the decaying seasons of the year!
Youth is beautiful. Its friendship is precious. The intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn and stained hardness of older life.
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