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Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes

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. His brother was the composer Richard Storrs Willis and his sister Sara wrote under the name Fanny Fern. Harriet Jacobs wrote her autobiography while being employed as his children's nurse.

Born in Portland, Maine, Willis came from a family of publishers. His grandfather Nathaniel Willis owned newspapers in Massachusetts and Virginia, and his father Nathaniel Willis was the founder of Youth's Companion, the first newspaper specifically for children. Willis developed an interest in literature while attending Yale College and began publishing poetry. After graduation, he worked as an overseas correspondent for the New York Mirror. He eventually moved to New York and began to build his literary reputation. Working with multiple publications, he was earning about $100 per article and between $5,000 and $10,000 per year. In 1846, he started his own publication, the Home Journal, which was eventually renamed Town & Country. Shortly after, Willis moved to a home on the Hudson River where he lived a semi-retired life until his death in 1867.

Willis embedded his own personality into his writing and addressed his readers personally, specifically in his travel writings, so that his reputation was built in part because of his character. Critics, including his sister in her novel Ruth Hall, occasionally described him as being effeminate and Europeanized. Willis also published several poems, tales, and a play. Despite his intense popularity for a time, at his death Willis was nearly forgotten.



Wikipedia  

✵ 20. January 1806 – 20. January 1867
Nathaniel Parker Willis photo
Nathaniel Parker Willis: 7   quotes 0   likes

Famous Nathaniel Parker Willis Quotes

“For it stirs the blood in an old man’s heart,
And makes his pulses fly,
To catch the thrill of a happy voice
And the light of a pleasant eye.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis

Saturday Afternoon.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

“He who binds
His soul to knowledge, steals the key of heaven.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis

Willis, The Scholar of Thibét Ben Khorat, II. Quote reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 419-23.

“At present there is no distinction among the upper ten thousand of the city.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis

Necessity for a Promenade Drive. Compare: "I want you to see Peel, Stanley, Graham, Sheil, Russell, Macaulay, Old Joe, and soon. They are all upper-crust here." Thomas Chandler Haliburton, Sam Slick in England, 2 Chap., xxiv.; "Those families, you know, are our upper-crust,—not upper ten thousand", James Fenimore Cooper, The Ways of the Hour, chapter vi. (1850).
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

“It is the month of June,
The month of leaves and roses,
When pleasant sights salute the eyes,
And pleasant scents the noses.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis

The Month of June.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

“The sin forgiven by Christ in Heaven
By man is cursed alway.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis

Unseen Spirits.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

“Let us weep in our darkness, but weep not for him!
Not for him who, departing, leaves millions in tears!
Not for him who has died full of honor and years!
Not for him who ascended Fame’s ladder so high:
From the round at the top he has stepped to the sky.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis

The Death of Harrison.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

“Wisdom sits alone
Topmost in Heaven.”

Nathaniel Parker Willis

The Scholar of Thibet.
Bartlett's Familiar Quotations (1919)

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