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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.

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
Playwright
Politician
Writer
New York City
New York
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Geoffrey Crayon
Lauuncelot Langstaff
Desire
Gratification
Death
Length
Languishes
Cannot
Curiosity
Novelties
Even
Cease
Languish
Every
Surprise
Stimulants
Miracle
Excite
Bears
Repeated
Wonder
Novelty

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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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Enthusiasts soon understand each other.
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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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Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of 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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There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees.
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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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A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials heavy and sudden fall upon us when adversity takes the place of prosperity when friends desert us when trouble thickens around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.
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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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There is a remembrance of the dead to which we turn even from the charms of the living.
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I've had it with you and your emotional constipation!
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Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it
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For what is history, but... huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species.
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It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
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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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There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.
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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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