Quote

Luxury spreads its ample board before their eyes but they are excluded from the banquet. Plenty revels over the fields but theyare starving in the midst of its abundance: the whole wilderness has blossomed into a garden but they feel as reptiles that infest it.

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
Eyes
Abundance
Banquets
Eye
Native
Ample
Whole
Midst
Spreads
Feel
Luxury
Excluded
Infest
Feels
Plenty
Starving
Revels
Spread
Board
Blossomed
Garden
Boards
Banquet
Fields
Wilderness
Reptiles

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Enthusiasts soon understand each other.
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There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed.
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I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.
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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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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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The only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.
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[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.
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Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven.
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I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
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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.
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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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From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.
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The very difference of character in marriage produces a harmonious combination.
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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.
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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.
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It lightens the stroke to draw near to Him who handles the rod.
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Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it
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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.
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