Washington Irving famous quotes

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.
-- Washington Irving

#Inspirational #Positive #Meaningful

Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
-- Washington Irving

#Christmas #Thank You #Heart

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
-- Washington Irving

#Love #Broken Heart #Heartbreak

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
-- Washington Irving

#Inspirational #Motivational #Success

A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.
-- Washington Irving

#Love #Family #Mom

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
-- Washington Irving

#Tears #Weakness #Mark

There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.
-- Washington Irving

#Love #Marriage #Sympathy

A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends desert us; when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.
-- Washington Irving

#Family #Mom #Mother

Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant.
-- Washington Irving

#Happiness #Laughter #Wine

They who drink beer will think beer.
-- Washington Irving

#Funny #Witty #Drinking

One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more.
-- Washington Irving

#Age #Growing #Tools

There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard.
-- Washington Irving

#Jealousy #Strong #Jealous

An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.
-- Washington Irving

#Attitude #Weather #Oil

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.
-- Washington Irving

#Mourning #Sorrow #Divorced

Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginitive in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.
-- Washington Irving

#Loneliness #Loss #Bird

There is certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.
-- Washington Irving

#Change #Comfort #Relief

There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that trancends all other affections of the heart
-- Washington Irving

#Mother #Heart #Son

The only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.
-- Washington Irving

#World #Care #Reputation

Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.
-- Washington Irving

#Inspirational #Motivational #Wisdom

He who wins a thousand common hearts is entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.
-- Washington Irving

#Hero #Heart #Winning

It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world; and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
-- Washington Irving

#Children #Home #Parent

There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.
-- Washington Irving

#Serenity #Mind #Produce

A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
-- Washington Irving

#Birthday #Anger #Age

I've had it with you and your emotional constipation!
-- Washington Irving

#Emotional #Constipation

The tongue is the only instrument that gets sharper with use.
-- Washington Irving

#Communication #Tongue #Use

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

#Friendship #Inspiring #Goodbye

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.
-- Washington Irving

#Nature #Soul #Noble

A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.
-- Washington Irving

#Life #Happiness #Smile

There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
-- Washington Irving

#Encouraging #Kindness #Lying

The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal - every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open - this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
-- Washington Irving

#Grieving #Funeral #Bereavement

The easiest thing to do, whenever you fail, is to put yourself down by blaming your lack of ability for your misfortunes.
-- Washington Irving

#Blame #Failing #Ability

There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble.
-- Washington Irving

#Fear #Real #Humble

A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
-- Washington Irving

#Dog #Sleep #Pet

He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.
-- Washington Irving

#Heart #Imagination #Perception

The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed to soon fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily into immortality.
-- Washington Irving

#Fall #Writing #Light

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

#Heart #Ease #Hospitality

The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.
-- Washington Irving

#Age #Library #Buckets

There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees. It argues, I think, a sweet and generous nature to have his strong relish for the beauties of vegetation, and this friendship for the hardy and glorious sons of the forest. He who plants a tree looks forward to future ages, and plants for posterity. Nothing could be less selfish than this.
-- Washington Irving

#Sweet #Strong #Selfish

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

#Mother #World #Faces

A mother is the truest friend we have when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity.
-- Washington Irving

#Mother #Fall #Adversity

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

#Christmas #Couple #Half

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

#History #Honor #Pages

It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tendered kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.
-- Washington Irving

#Autumn #Sky #Ideas

Good temper, like a sunny day, sheds a ray of brightness over everything; it is the sweetener of toil and the soother of disquietude!
-- Washington Irving

#Brightness #Rays #Toil

There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.
-- Washington Irving

#Morning #Book #Holiday

If I can, by a lucky chance, in these uneasy days, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness; if I can, how and then, prompt a happier view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, I shall not have written in vain.
-- Washington Irving

#Inspirational Life #Heart #Sadness

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand; and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
-- Washington Irving

#Fall #Character #Dust

What earnest worker, with hand and brain for the benefit of his fellowmen, could desire a more pleasing recognition of his usefulness than the monument of a tree, ever growing, ever blooming, and ever bearing wholesome fruit?
-- Washington Irving

#Hands #Tree #Brain

How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality,--a place, a country, a local habitation! how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us! Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places,--rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others,--where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore.
-- Washington Irving

#Summer #Country #Dark

Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.
-- Washington Irving

#Character #Facts #Littles

Too young for woe, though not for tears.
-- Washington Irving

#Tears #Woe #Youth

A father may turn his back on his child, … . but a mother's love endures through all.
-- Washington Irving

#Mother #Children #Father

Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears; but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks - a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, except in genuine Dutch families.
-- Washington Irving

#Cake #Cities #Apples

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

#Rose #Achievement #Trials

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

#Departed #Warning #Lapses

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

#Thinking #Ideas #Silence

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

#Beautiful #Morning #Exercise

The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion.
-- Washington Irving

#Money #Dollars #Devotion

The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated, except by those whose feelings are withered by vitiated society. Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, it is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth.
-- Washington Irving

#Beautiful #Mother #Children

I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
-- Washington Irving

#Home #Parent #Feelings

From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
-- Washington Irving

#Regret #Spring #Peaceful

Every desire bears its death in its very gratification. Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants, and novelties cease to excite and surprise, until at length we cannot wonder even at a miracle.
-- Washington Irving

#Miracle #Curiosity #Desire

I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortunes.
-- Washington Irving

#Endurance #Fortitude #Fortune

Enthusiasts soon understand each other.
-- Washington Irving

#Enthusiasm

Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assuduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.
-- Washington Irving

#Art #Struggle #Adversity

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

#Men #History #Fellow Man

I was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier.
-- Washington Irving

#Children #Book #Character

When the Gauls laid waste Rome, they found the senators clothed in their robes, and seated in stern tranquillity in their curule chairs; in this manner they suffered death without resistance or supplication. Such conduct was in them applauded as noble and magnanimous; in the hapless Indians it was reviled as both obstinate and sullen. How truly are we the dupes of show and circumstances! How different is virtue, clothed in purple and enthroned in state, from virtue, naked and destitute, and perishing obscurely in a wilderness.
-- Washington Irving

#Rome #Purple #Different

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

#Maturity #Animal #Progress

There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.
-- Washington Irving

#Government #Long #Despotism

Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes; but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields; but theyare starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden; but they feel as reptiles that infest it.
-- Washington Irving

#Native American #Eye #Garden

In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part.
-- Washington Irving

#Happiness #Men #Acting

After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without; and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.
-- Washington Irving

#Divinity #Talent #Charm

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

#Distance #Book #Reading

To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.
-- Washington Irving

#Rest In Peace #Sleep #Thinking

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

#Struggle #Men #Mind

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

#True Friend #Cheer #Real

It's a fair wind that blew men to ale.
-- Washington Irving

#Beer #Men #Wind

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

#Men #Worry #Community

Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
-- Washington Irving

#Husband #Home #Men

after a man passes 60 , his mischief is mainly in his head
-- Washington Irving

#Men #Mischief

I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.
-- Washington Irving

#Heart #Matter #Admiration

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

#Dream #Air #Mind

There is a sacredness in tears
-- Washington Irving

#Tears #Sacredness

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

#Heart #Unhappy #Abandoned

Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.
-- Washington Irving

#Paris #Ghouls #House

The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value.
-- Washington Irving

#Adversity #Silent #Innocent

Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.
-- Washington Irving

#Land

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

#Happiness #Light #Glowing

All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman.
-- Washington Irving

#Lonely #Night #Men

The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
-- Washington Irving

#Condolences #Sorrow #Mind

Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
-- Washington Irving

#Business #Humorous #Law

No man is so methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring out his time as he whose time is worth nothing.
-- Washington Irving

#Men #Sloth #Laziness

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

#Loneliness #Feelings #Mind

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

#Business #Reality #Romance

The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
-- Washington Irving

#Sports #Hero #Idols

The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by stratagem.
-- Washington Irving

#War #Enemy #Principles

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

#Art #Men #Imagination

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

#Acting #Fulfillment #Fulfilled