Top 100 Washington Irving Quotes
#1. A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.
Washington Irving
#2. But what courage can withstand the ever-during and all-besetting terrors of a woman's tongue?
Washington Irving
#3. There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt and puts the stranger at once at his ease.
Washington Irving
#4. There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.
Washington Irving
#5. Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No - no, your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.
Washington Irving
#6. Great minds have purpose, others have wishes. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortunes; but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving
#7. The moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside; the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm; the dreary hooting of the screechowl.
Washington Irving
#9. What is it to know a variety of languages, but merely to have a variety of sounds express the same idea? Original thought is ore of the mind; language is but the stamp and coinage by which it is put into circulation.
Washington Irving
#10. It is worthy to note, that the early popularity of Washington was not the result of brilliant achievement nor signal success; on the contrary, it rose among trials and reverses, and may almost be said to have been the fruit of defeat.
Washington Irving
#12. Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England
Washington Irving
#14. I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.
Washington Irving
#15. For what is history, but ... huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species.
Washington Irving
#16. For my part, I love to give myself up to the illusion of poetry. A hero of fiction that never existed is just as valuable to me as a hero of history that existed a thousand years ago.
Washington Irving
#17. It's a dog eat dog world. But only if the second dog is more stupid than the first.
Washington Irving
#18. The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.
Washington Irving
#19. Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence.
Washington Irving
#20. The slanders of the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision.
Washington Irving
#22. And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate ...
Washington Irving
#23. somehow or other, there is a genial sunshine about you that warms every creeping thing into heart and confidence. Your
Washington Irving
#24. I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
Washington Irving
#25. It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
Washington Irving
#26. Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
Washington Irving
#27. [I]n the gloomy month of February ... The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time ...
Washington Irving
#28. No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.
Washington Irving
#29. There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse; as I have found in traveling in a stage coach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving
#30. How easy is it for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him, and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles.
Washington Irving
#31. Thus it happens that your true dull minds are generally preferred for public employ, and especially promoted to city honors; your keen intellects, like razors, being considered too sharp for common service. I
Washington Irving
#32. Into the space of one little hour sins enough may be conjured up by evil tongues to blast the fame of a whole life of virtue.
Washington Irving
#33. Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts.
Washington Irving
#34. Christmas is here, Merry old Christmas, Gift-bearing Christmas, Day of grand memories, King of the year!
Washington Irving
#35. It has also been the peculiar lot of our country to be visited by the worst kind of English travellers.
Washington Irving
#36. The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
Washington Irving
#37. Ducks and geese are foolish things, and must be looked after, but girls can take care of themselves.
Washington Irving
#40. There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.
Washington Irving
#41. There is nothing in this world so hard to get at as truth, and there is nothing in this world but truth that I care for.
Washington Irving
#42. He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner.
Washington Irving
#43. Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface
Washington Irving
#44. A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man; because love is more the study and business of her life.
Washington Irving
#45. A few amber clouds floated in the sky without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven.
Washington Irving
#46. It lightens the stroke to draw near to Him who handles the rod.
Washington Irving
#49. Believe me, the man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, eats oftener a sweeter morsel, however coarse, than he who procures it by the labor of his brains.
Washington Irving
#50. Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything.
Washington Irving
#51. Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving
#52. No! no! My engagement is with no bride
the worms! the worms expect me! I am a dead man
I have been slain by robbers
my body lies at Wurtzburg
at midnight I am to be buried
the grave is waiting for me
I must keep my appointment!
Washington Irving
#53. My object is merely to give the reader a general introduction into an abode where, if so disposed, he may linger and loiter with me day by day until we gradually become familiar with all its localities.
Washington Irving
#54. Man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.
Washington Irving
#55. Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
Washington Irving
#56. The love of a mother is never exhausted. It never changes - it never tires - it endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute. In the face of the world's condemnation, a mother's love still lives on.
Washington Irving
#57. It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.
Washington Irving
#58. Thus, by divers little makeshifts, in that ingenious way which is commonly denominated "by hook and by crook," the worthy pedagogue got on tolerably enough, and was thought, by all who understood nothing of the labor of headwork, to have a wonderfully easy life of it.
Washington Irving
#59. Roast beef and plum pudding are also held in superstitious veneration, and port and sherry maintain their grounds as the only true English wines; all others being considered vile, outlandish beverages.
Washington Irving
#60. Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.
Washington Irving
#61. Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure; but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new,
active, and immediate.
Washington Irving
#63. Critics are a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters
who, like deer, goats and divers other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure, and retarding their progress to maturity.
Washington Irving
#64. He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.
Washington Irving
#65. It was Shakespeare's notion that on this day birds begin to couple; hence probably arose the custom of sending fancy love-billets.
Washington Irving
#66. Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
Washington Irving
#67. The dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony.
Washington Irving
#69. Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time; otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.
Washington Irving
#70. Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.
Washington Irving
#71. I have often wondered at the extreme fecundity of the press, and how it comes to pass that so many heads on which nature seemed to have inflicted the curse of barrenness should teem with voluminous productions.
Washington Irving
#72. Men are always doomed to be duped, not so much by the arts of the other as by their own imagination. They are always wooing goddesses, and marrying mere mortals.
Washington Irving
#74. Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trepass on that of others.
Washington Irving
#75. There are moments of mingled sorrow and tenderness, which hallow the caresses of affection.
Washington Irving
#76. There is a remembrance of the dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the living. These we would not exchange for the song of pleasure or the bursts of revelry.
Washington Irving
#77. Sweet is the memory of distant friends! Like the mellow rays of the departing sun, it falls tenderly, yet sadly, on the heart.
Washington Irving
#80. There is nothing like the silence and loneliness of night to bring dark shadows over the brightest mind.
Washington Irving
#82. Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.
Washington Irving
#83. There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.
Washington Irving
#84. Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for some stomachs; but honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting.
Washington Irving
#85. The dance, like most dances after supper, was a merry one; some of the older folks joined in it, and the squire himself figured down several couple with a partner, with whom he affirmed he had danced at every Christmas for nearly half a century.
Washington Irving
#86. He who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
Washington Irving
#88. Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.
Washington Irving
#89. I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortunes.
Washington Irving
#90. Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.
Washington Irving
#91. When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
Washington Irving
#92. Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving
#94. Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon on all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment.
Washington Irving
#95. It is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations; there exists, more commonly, a previous jealousy and ill will, a predisposition to take offense.
Washington Irving
#96. Villainy wears many masks; none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
Washington Irving
#97. History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.
Washington Irving
#98. How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in
obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.
Washington Irving
#99. There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that trancends all other affections of the heart
Washington Irving
#100. Fortune, in fact, is a pestilent shrew, and, withal, an inexorable creditor; and though for a time she may be all smiles and courtesies, and indulge us in long credits, yet sooner or later she brings up her arrears with a vengeance, and washes out her scores with our tears.
Washington Irving
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