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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.
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
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New York City
New York
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Geoffrey Crayon
Lauuncelot Langstaff
Life
Comedy
Difficult
Character
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Humans
Well
Bachelor
Play
Bachelors
More quotes by Washington Irving
The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed to soon fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily into immortality.
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Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune but great minds rise above them.
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Villainy wears many masks none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
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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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Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.
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The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
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Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and immediate.
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A mother is the truest friend we have.
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Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.
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The easiest thing to do, whenever you fail, is to put yourself down by blaming your lack of ability for your misfortunes.
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There is a certain artificial polish, a commonplace vivacity acquired by perpetually mingling in the beau monde which, in the commerce of world, supplies the place of natural suavity and good-humour, but is purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of character.
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There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.
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Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts.
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I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.
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The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.
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Rising genius always shoots forth its rays from among clouds and vapours, but these will gradually roll away and disappear, as it ascends to its steady and meridian lustre.
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He that drinks beer, thinks beer.
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A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother's love endures through all.
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The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion.
Washington Irving
