Top 50 Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “Gentleness is the great point to be obtained in the study of manners.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

2. “Fine taste is an aspect of genius itself, and is the faculty of delicate appreciation, which makes the best effects of art our own.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

3. “Blessed are the joymakers.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

4. “The innocence that feels no risk and is taught no caution, is more vulnerable than guilt, and oftener assailed.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

5. “It is godlike to unloose the spirit, and forget yourself in thought.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

6. “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.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

7. “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!”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

8. “There they stand, the innumerable stars, shining in order like a living hymn, written in light.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

9. “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

10. “Pitch a lucky man into the Nile, says the Arabian proverb, and he will come up with a fish in his mouth!”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

11. “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.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

12. “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.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

13. “And mad ambition trumpeteth to all.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

14. “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

15. “Maturity is most rapid in the low latitudes, where pineapples and women most do thrive.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

16. “Gratitude is not only the memory but the homage of the heart- rendered to God for his goodness.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

17. “The Italians say that a beautiful woman by her smiles draws tears from our purse.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

18. “A lamp is lit in woman’s eye; that souls, else lost on earth, remember angels by.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

19. “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.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

20. “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

21. “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.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

22. “The expressive word “quiet” defines the dress, manners, bow, and even physiognomy of every true denizen of St. James and Bond street.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

23. “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

24. “Vulgarity is more obvious in satin than in homespun.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

25. “Of dead kingdoms I recall the soul, sitting amid their ruins.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

26. “The soul of man createth its own destiny.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

27. “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.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

28. “The lily and the rose in her fair face striving for precedence.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

29. “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

30. “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

31. “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.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

32. “How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

33. “I knelt, and with the fervor of a lip unused to the cool breath of reason, told my love.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

34. “Nature has thrown a veil of modest beauty over maidenhood and moss-roses.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

35. “T is the work of many a dark hour, many a prayer, to bring the heart back from an infant gone.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

36. “The value of life deepens incalculably with the privileges of travel.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

37. “There is no divining-rod whose dip shall tell us at twenty what we shall most relish at thirty.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

38. “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

39. “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

40. “The position you hold and the work you are now doing.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

41. “The ear in man and beast is an evidence of blood and high breeding.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

42. “Nature has wrought with a bolder hand in America.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

43. “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

44. “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

45. “Temptation hath a music for all ears.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

46. “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

47. “But he who never sins can little boast Compared to him who goes and sins no more!”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

48. “Some noble spirits mistake despair for content.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

49. “The sin forgiven by Christ in HeavenBy man is cursed alway.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis

50. “The taste forever refines in the study of women.”

— Nathaniel Parker Willis