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I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.
Washington Irving
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Washington Irving
Age: 76 †
Born: 1783
Born: April 3
Died: 1859
Died: November 28
Author
Biographer
Diplomat
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
Lawyer
Novelist
Playwright
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Geoffrey Crayon
Lauuncelot Langstaff
Always
Loss
Stories
Writing
Much
Believe
More quotes by Washington Irving
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
Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
Washington Irving
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
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
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
The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion.
Washington Irving
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
He that drinks beer, thinks beer.
Washington Irving
A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.
Washington Irving
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
Washington Irving
There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.
Washington Irving
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
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
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
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
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble.
Washington Irving
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
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
To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea-voyage is full of subjects for meditation but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes.
Washington Irving
