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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.

Washington Irving

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Washington Irving
Age: 76 †
Born: 1783
Born: April 3
Died: 1859
Died: November 28
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New York City
New York
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Geoffrey Crayon
Lauuncelot Langstaff
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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.
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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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Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
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I sometimes think one of the great blessings we shall enjoy in heaven, will be to receive letters by every post and never be obliged to reply to them.
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Villainy wears many masks none so dangerous as the mask of virtue.
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He who wins a thousand common hearts is entitled to some renown but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.
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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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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?
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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.
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To occupy an inch of dusty shelf-to have the title of their works read now and then in a future age by some drowsy churchman or casual straggler, and in another age to be lost, even to remembrance. Such is the amount of boasted immortality.
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A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.
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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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The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves and this of course is to be effected by stratagem.
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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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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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And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate.
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