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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
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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
Much
Poverty
Pretension
Mind
Proud
Purses
Men
Struggle
Pretense
Show
Hollow
Shows
Ruined
Ends
Keeping
Come
Soon
Must
Empty
Purse
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
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
There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.
Washington Irving
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
I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.
Washington Irving
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
I've had it with you and your emotional constipation!
Washington Irving
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse.
Washington Irving
It is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is irrepressible, unconfinable that when the real world is shut out, it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power can conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions to make solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of a dungeon.
Washington Irving
With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do incalculable mischief.
Washington Irving
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
Villainy wears many masks none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
Washington Irving
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
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
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
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
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
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
Enthusiasts soon understand each other.
Washington Irving
There are moments of mingled sorrow and tenderness, which hallow the caresses of affection.
Washington Irving
