Washington Irving
Washington Irving
Washington Irvingwas an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle"and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors and the Alhambra. Irving served as...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 April 1783
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
Men are always doomed to be duped, not so much by the arts of the other as by their own imagination. They are always wooing goddesses, and marrying mere mortals.
Great minds have purposes; little minds have wishes. Little minds are subdued by misfortunes; great minds rise above them.
Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
No man is so methodical as a complete idler, and none so scrupulous in measuring out his time as he whose time is worth nothing.
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.
After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without...
A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.
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.
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?
Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
Christmas is here, Merry old Christmas, Gift-bearing Christmas, Day of grand memories, King of the year!
Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it
He who would study nature in its wildness and variety, must plunge into the forest, must explore the glen, must stem the torrent, and dare the precipice.
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.