Nathaniel Parker Willis Art Quotations

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.

The highest triumph of art, is the truest presentation of nature.

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.

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

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.