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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

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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
Rather
Sea
Themes
Given
Air
Fond
Dream
Losing
Wonders
Mind
Meditation
Dreaming
Subjects
Worldly
Reveries
Deep
Theme
Reverie
Full
Abstract
Voyage
Wonder
Tend
Voyages

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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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He is the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.
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A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
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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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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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Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.
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Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.
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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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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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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.
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It was the policy of the good old gentleman to make his children feel that home was the happiest place in the world and I value this delicious home-feeling as one of the choicest gifts a parent can bestow.
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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.
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He that drinks beer, thinks beer.
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Small minds are subdued by misfortunes, greater minds overcome them.
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Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
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The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
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