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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.
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
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Volume
History
Holding
Nature
Add
Human
Page
Humans
Pages
Industriously
Species
Libel
Honor
Infamy
Huge
Monument
More quotes by Washington Irving
The tongue is the only instrument that gets sharper with use.
Washington Irving
Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.
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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.
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The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion.
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It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
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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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Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface
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?
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What earnest worker, with hand and brain for the benefit of his fellowmen, could desire a more pleasing recognition of his usefulness than the monument of a tree, ever growing, ever blooming, and ever bearing wholesome fruit?
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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.
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The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.
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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.
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There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees.
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The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated.
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There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.
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Poetry is evidently a contagious complaint.
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True love will not brook reserve it feels undervalued and outraged, when even the sorrows of those it loves are concealed from it.
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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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Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it
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There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard.
Washington Irving
