Share
×
Inspirational Quotes
Authors
Professions
Topics
Tags
Quote
A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
Washington Irving
Share
Change background
T
T
T
Change font
Original
TAGS & TOPICS
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
Sleeping
Useful
Dog
Sleep
Often
Barking
Action
Lion
Pet
Lions
More quotes by Washington Irving
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
There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.
Washington Irving
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
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
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
Washington Irving
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
The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion.
Washington Irving
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
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
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
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble.
Washington Irving
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
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
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
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
Washington Irving
The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated.
Washington Irving
The youthful freshness of a blameless heart.
Washington Irving
I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.
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
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
