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With every exertion, the best of men can do but a moderate amount of good but it seems in the power of the most contemptible individual to do incalculable mischief.
Washington Irving
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Washington Irving
Age: 76 †
Born: 1783
Born: April 3
Died: 1859
Died: November 28
Author
Biographer
Diplomat
Essayist
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Journalist
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New York City
New York
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Geoffrey Crayon
Lauuncelot Langstaff
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Contemptible
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Exertion
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Moderate
Every
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Mischief
Men
Amount
Evil
Individual
Incalculable
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There is in every true woman's heart, a spark of heavenly fire, which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
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It is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations there exists, more commonly, a previous jealousy and ill will, a predisposition to take offense.
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The oil and wine of merry meeting.
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Too young for woe, though not for tears.
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Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
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He who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
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There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power. They speak more eloquently than ten thousand tongues. They are the messengers of overwhelming grief, of deep contrition, and of unspeakable love.
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Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of others, whereas nothing is so offensive as the aspirings of vulgarity which thinks to elevate itself by humiliating its neighbor.
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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.
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A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
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Small minds are subdued by misfortunes, greater minds overcome them.
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No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.
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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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Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune but great minds rise above them.
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I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.
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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 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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It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tendered kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.
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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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From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
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