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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.
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
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New York City
New York
Diedrich Knickerbocker
Geoffrey Crayon
Lauuncelot Langstaff
Probably
Shakespeare
Love
Customs
Birds
Fancy
Notion
Arose
Bird
Custom
Begin
Sending
Couple
Hence
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After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without and I have been more fascinated by a woman of talent and intelligence, though deficient in personal charms, than I have been by the most regular beauty.
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From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
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And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate.
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I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.
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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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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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History fades into fable fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy the inscription molders from the tablet: the statue falls from the pedestal. Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand and their epitaphs, but characters written in the dust?
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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.
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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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It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.
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There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.
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Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulness to maturity and to glory in the vigour and luxuriance of her chance productions.
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A kind heart is a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity freshen into smiles.
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How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.
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