Nathaniel Parker Willis
Nathaniel Parker Willis
Nathaniel Parker Willis, also known as N. P. Willis, was an American author, poet and editor who worked with several notable American writers including Edgar Allan Poe and Henry Wadsworth Longfellow. He became the highest-paid magazine writer of his day. For a time, he was the employer of former slave and future writer Harriet Jacobs. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionAuthor
Date of Birth20 January 1806
CountryUnited States of America
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.
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.
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.
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!
How like a mounting devil in the heart rules the unreined ambition.
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.
T is the work of many a dark hour, many a prayer, to bring the heart back from an infant gone.
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.
At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.
Like Melrose Abbey, large cities should especially be viewed by moonlight.
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.
Maturity is most rapid in the low latitudes, where pineapples and women most do thrive.
Gentleness is the great point to be obtained in the study of manners.