Quote

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.

Washington Irving

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Kind
Calendars
Men
Register
Crimes
Fellow
Fellows
Misery
Miseries
Crime
Calendar
History
Inflicted

More quotes by Washington Irving

Image
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
Image
I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
He that drinks beer, thinks beer.
Washington Irving
Image
Poetry is evidently a contagious complaint.
Washington Irving
Image
If I can, by a lucky chance, in these uneasy days, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness if I can, how and then, prompt a happier view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, I shall not have written in vain.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
The love of a mother is never exhausted. It never changes - it never tires - it endures through all in good repute, in bad repute. In the face of the world's condemnation, a mother's love still lives on.
Washington Irving
Image
The oil and wine of merry meeting.
Washington Irving
Image
[I]n the gloomy month of February.... The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time.
Washington Irving
Image
The dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony.
Washington Irving
Image
Christmas is a season for kindling the fire for hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
Washington Irving
Image
One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more.
Washington Irving
Image
Every antique farm-house and moss-grown cottage is a picture.
Washington Irving