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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
Society
Eradicated
Eye
Lawn
Every
Lawns
Like
Velvet
Smiling
Delighted
Verdure
Grass
Smoothed
Surface
Roughness

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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.
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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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He who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
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Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
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Every desire bears its death in its very gratification. Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants, and novelties cease to excite and surprise, until at length we cannot wonder even at a miracle.
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