Washington Irving
Poetry is evidently a contagious complaint.Collection: Poetry
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.Collection: Dream
Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.Collection: Character
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.Collection: Departed
There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees.Collection: Simple
A mother is the truest friend we have.Collection: Mom
It lightens the stroke to draw near to Him who handles the rod.Collection: Prayer
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.Collection: Men
He who wins a thousand common hearts is entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.Collection: Hero
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.Collection: History
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.Collection: Children
There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Reputation
There is a sacredness in tearsCollection: Tears
The almighty dollar, that great object of universal devotion throughout our land, seems to have no genuine devotees in these peculiar villages.Collection: Money
The very difference of character in marriage produces a harmonious combination.Collection: Character
The only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.Collection: World
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced.Collection: Mourning
How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality,--a place, a country, a local habitation! how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us! Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places,--rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others,--where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore.Collection: Summer
I consider a story merely as a frame on which to stretch my materials.Collection: Writing
Into the space of one little hour sins enough may be conjured up by evil tongues to blast the fame of a whole life of virtue.Collection: Space
There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.Collection: Fishing
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.Collection: Men
He that drinks beer, thinks beer.Collection: Humorous
Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.Collection: Loneliness
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.Collection: Men
There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.Collection: Strength
Enthusiasts soon understand each other.Collection: Enthusiasm
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.Collection: Art
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.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Happiness
A father may turn his back on his child, … . but a mother's love endures through all.Collection: Sister
Over no nation does the press hold a more absolute control than over the people of America, for the universal education of the poorest classes makes every individual a reader.Collection: Class
Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven.Collection: Light
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man.Collection: Men
I have never found, in anything outside of the four walls of my study, an enjoyment equal to sitting at my writing desk with a clean page, a new theme, and a mind awake.Collection: Wall
No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.Collection: Marriage
Every desire bears its death in its very gratification. Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants, and novelties cease to excite and surprise, until at length we cannot wonder even at a miracle.Collection: Miracle
Believe me, the man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, eats oftener a sweeter morsel, however coarse, than he who procures it by the labor of his brains.Collection: Believe
Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of EnglandCollection: Lakes
Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for some stomachs; but honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting.Collection: Wine
Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surfaceCollection: Eye
The youthful freshness of a blameless heart.Collection: Heart
It is the divine attribute of the imagination, that it is irrepressible, unconfinable; that when the real world is shut out, it can create a world for itself, and with a necromantic power can conjure up glorious shapes and forms, and brilliant visions to make solitude populous, and irradiate the gloom of a dungeon.Collection: Real
A few amber clouds floated in the sky without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven.Collection: Moving
Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Writing
Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of adversity.Collection: Husband
The paternal hearth, the rallying-place of the affections.Collection: Home