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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
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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
Like
Velvet
Smiling
Delighted
Verdure
Grass
Smoothed
Surface
Roughness
Society
Eradicated
Eye
Lawn
Every
Lawns
More quotes by Washington Irving
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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The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
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There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.
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Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon on all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment.
Washington Irving
The oil and wine of merry meeting.
Washington Irving
Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the sprit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment.
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 something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees.
Washington Irving
Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.
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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.
Washington Irving
He that drinks beer, thinks beer.
Washington Irving
How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.
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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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A mother is the truest friend we have when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us when adversity takes the place of prosperity.
Washington Irving
The Englishman is too apt to neglect the present good in preparing against the possible evil.
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Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.
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Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of others, whereas nothing is so offensive as the aspirings of vulgarity which thinks to elevate itself by humiliating its neighbor.
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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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Too young for woe, though not for tears.
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Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.
Washington Irving
