Quote

The slanders of the pen pierce to the heart they rankle longest in the noblest spirits they dwell ever present in the mind and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision.

Washington Irving

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Present
Noblest
Spirit
Longest
Ever
Render
Morbidly
Heart
Dwell
Slanders
Mind
Pens
Trifling
Spirits
Collision
Sensitive
Slander
Criticism
Pierce

More quotes by Washington Irving

Image
Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England
Washington Irving
Image
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?
Washington Irving
Image
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.
Washington Irving
Image
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
Washington Irving
Image
When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
Washington Irving
Image
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble.
Washington Irving
Image
A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man because love is more the study and business of her life.
Washington Irving
Image
There is certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one's position, and be bruised in a new place.
Washington Irving
Image
Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields but theyare starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden but they feel as reptiles that infest it.
Washington Irving
Image
Enthusiasts soon understand each other.
Washington Irving
Image
A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.
Washington Irving
Image
A few amber clouds floated in the sky without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven.
Washington Irving
Image
A mother is the truest friend we have.
Washington Irving
Image
The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value.
Washington Irving
Image
Sometimes the table was graced with immense apple-pies, or saucers full of preserved peaches and pears but it was always sure to boast an enormous dish of balls of sweetened dough, fried in hog's fat, and called doughnuts, or olykoeks - a delicious kind of cake, at present scarce known in this city, except in genuine Dutch families.
Washington Irving
Image
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?
Washington Irving
Image
Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.
Washington Irving
Image
I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving