Quote

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.

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
Progress
Republic
Subsistence
Animal
Forests
Robbing
Upon
Gain
Bud
Young
Leaves
Goats
Retarding
Kind
Critics
Deer
Verdure
Like
Gains
Thereby
Divers
Letters
Forest
Shrubs
Animals
Maturity
Buds

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Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence.
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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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It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man.
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The moan of the whip-poor-will from the hillside the boding cry of the tree-toad, that harbinger of storm the dreary hooting of the screechowl.
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He that drinks beer, thinks beer.
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The only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.
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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.
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Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune but great minds rise above them.
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Too young for woe, though not for tears.
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after a man passes 60 , his mischief is mainly in his head
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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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I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
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A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
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Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface
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The oil and wine of merry meeting.
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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 the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is irrepressible, unconfinable that when the real world is shut out, it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power can conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions to make solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of a dungeon.
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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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Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it
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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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