Nathaniel Parker Willis
The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.
If there is anything that keeps the mind open to angel visits, and repels the ministry of ill, it is human love.
Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart rendered to God for his goodness.
Press on! for in the grave there is no work and no device. Press on! while yet you may.
The lily and the rose in her fair face striving for precedence.
At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.
He who binds his soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven.
Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart- rendered to God for his goodness.Collection: Motivational
The highest triumph of art, is the truest presentation of nature.Collection: Art
The smallest pebble in the well of truth has its peculiar meaning, and will stand when man's best monuments have passed away.Collection: Truth
A lamp is lit in woman's eye; that souls, else lost on earth, remember angels by.Collection: Eye
It is godlike to unloose the spirit, and forget yourself in thought.Collection: Spirit
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.Collection: Spring
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.Collection: Wisdom
Gentleness is the great point to be obtained in the study of manners.Collection: Study
I knelt, and with the fervor of a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told my love.Collection: Lips
Flirtation is a circulating library, in which we seldom ask twice for the same volume.Collection: Flirting
And mad ambition trumpeteth to all.Collection: Ambition
The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.Collection: Travel
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.Collection: Mother
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.Collection: Country
The taste forever refines in the study of women.Collection: Women
Nature has thrown a veil of modest beauty over maidenhood and moss-roses.Collection: Rose
Ah me! the world is full of meetings such as this,--a thrill, a voiceless challenge and reply, and sudden partings after!Collection: Challenges
Vulgarity is more obvious in satin than in homespun.Collection: Vulgarity Is
The soul of man createth its own destiny.Collection: Destiny
Like Melrose Abbey, large cities should especially be viewed by moonlight.Collection: Cities
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!Collection: Prayer
T is the work of many a dark hour, many a prayer, to bring the heart back from an infant gone.Collection: Prayer
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.Collection: Flower
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.Collection: Flirting
Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruinsCollection: Soul
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.Collection: Destiny
The position you hold and the work you are now doing.Collection: Business
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.Collection: Prejudice
Temptation hath a music for all ears.Collection: Temptation
Blessed are the joymakers.Collection: Blessed
The Italians say that a beautiful woman by her smiles draws tears from our purse.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Children
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.Collection: Beautiful
Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own.Collection: Appreciation
How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.Collection: Heart
Youth is beautiful; its friendship is precious; the intercourse with it is a purifying release from the worn and stained harness of older life.Collection: Beautiful