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Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulness to maturity and to glory in the vigour and luxuriance of her chance productions.

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
Disappointing
Seems
Legitimate
Would
Maturity
Productions
Delight
Luxuriance
Glory
Dulness
Chance
Vigour
Art
Rear

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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.
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The oil and wine of merry meeting.
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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.
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They who drink beer will think beer.
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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.
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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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Small minds are subdued by misfortunes, greater minds overcome them.
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Into the space of one little hour sins enough may be conjured up by evil tongues to blast the fame of a whole life of virtue.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
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There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble.
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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.
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Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it
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There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard.
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By a kind of fashionable discipline, the eye is taught to brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to emanate with the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a single spark of genuine kindness and good-will.
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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.
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