Quote

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

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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
Nature
Humor
Vain
Brow
Care
Views
Fellows
Prompts
Human
Shall
Sadness
Brows
Humans
Days
Heavy
Uneasy
Heart
Written
Beings
Wrinkles
Make
Chance
Reader
Happier
Beguile
Good
Moment
View
Surely
Wrinkle
Moments
Lucky
Fellow
Prompt

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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.
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Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.
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Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven.
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I have never found, in anything outside of the four walls of my study, an enjoyment equal to sitting at my writing desk with a clean page, a new theme, and a mind awake.
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He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.
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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.
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No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.
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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.
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There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.
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The very difference of character in marriage produces a harmonious combination.
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Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it
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History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.
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The Indians with surprise found the mouldering trees of their forests suddenly teeming with ambrosial sweet and nothing, I am told, can exceed the greedy relish with which they banquet for the first time upon this unbought luxury of the wilderness.
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The oil and wine of merry meeting.
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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.
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The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
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A father may turn his back on his child, … . but a mother's love endures through all.
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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.
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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.
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There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that trancends all other affections of the heart
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