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I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.

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
Stories
Writing
Stretch
Frame
Consider
Merely
Materials
Story

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Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England
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Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for some stomachs but honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting.
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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 was always fond of visiting new scenes, and observing strange characters and manners. Even when a mere child I began my travels, and made many tours of discovery into foreign parts and unknown regions of my native city, to the frequent alarm of my parents, and the emolument of the town-crier.
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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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I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
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A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man because love is more the study and business of her life.
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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.
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Too young for woe, though not for tears.
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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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There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.
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It is worthy to note, that the early popularity of Washington was not the result of brilliant achievement nor signal success on the contrary, it rose among trials and reverses, and may almost be said to have been the fruit of defeat.
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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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Language gradually varies, and with it fade away the writings of authors who have flourished their allotted time otherwise, the creative powers of genius would overstock the world, and the mind would be completely bewildered in the endless mazes of literature.
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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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There was one species of despotism under which he had long groaned, and that was petticoat government.
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The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.
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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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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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There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt and puts the stranger at once at his ease.
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