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Man passes away his name perishes from record and recollection his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.

Washington Irving

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Washington Irving
Age: 76 †
Born: 1783
Born: April 3
Died: 1859
Died: November 28
Author
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Diplomat
Essayist
Historian
Journalist
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Novelist
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New York City
New York
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Geoffrey Crayon
Lauuncelot Langstaff
Name
Ruin
Names
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History
Ruins
Away
Tales
Men
Record
Perishes
Records
Recollection
Becomes
Monument
Told
Tale

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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.
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The youthful freshness of a blameless heart.
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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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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.
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Critics are a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters--who, like deer, goats and divers other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure, and retarding their progress to maturity.
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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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It was Shakespeare's notion that on this day birds begin to couple hence probably arose the custom of sending fancy love-billets.
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The Indians with surprise found the mouldering trees of their forests suddenly teeming with ambrosial sweet and nothing, I am told, can exceed the greedy relish with which they banquet for the first time upon this unbought luxury of the wilderness.
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History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.
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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.
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Too young for woe, though not for tears.
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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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He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner.
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There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees.
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He who would greatly deserve must greatly dare.
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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.
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