Quote

Other men are known to posterity only through the medium of history, which is continually growing faint and obscure but the intercourse between the author and his fellow-men is ever new, active, and immediate.

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
Men
Author
Faint
Fellow
Intercourse
Fellows
Posterity
Active
Continually
Growing
Obscure
Known
Immediate
History
Medium
Ever
Mediums

More quotes by Washington Irving

Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees.
Washington Irving
Image
He who would greatly deserve must greatly dare.
Washington Irving
Image
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
Image
It lightens the stroke to draw near to Him who handles the rod.
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
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
The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated, except by those whose feelings are withered by vitiated society. Holy, simple, and beautiful in its construction, it is the emblem of all we can imagine of fidelity and truth.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.
Washington Irving
Image
One point is certain, that truth is one and immutable until the jurors all agree, they cannot all be right.
Washington Irving
Image
Small minds are subdued by misfortunes, greater minds overcome them.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
To one given to day-dreaming, and fond of losing himself in reveries, a sea-voyage is full of subjects for meditation but then they are the wonders of the deep and of the air, and rather tend to abstract the mind from worldly themes.
Washington Irving
Image
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble.
Washington Irving
Image
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.
Washington Irving
Image
I have often had occasion to remark the fortitude with which women sustain the most overwhelming reverses of fortunes.
Washington Irving
Image
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
Washington Irving