Washington Irving Quotes

111 Sourced Quotes

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.

Washington Irving
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
I could not but smile to think in what out-of-the-way corners genius produces her bantlings! And the Muses, those capricious dames, who, forsooth, so often refuse to visit palaces, and deny a single smile to votaries in splendid studies, and gilded drawing-rooms--what holes and burrows will they frequent to lavish their favors on some ragged disciple!

Washington Irving
The Englishman is too apt to neglect the present good in preparing against the possible evil.

Washington Irving
They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air.

Washington Irving
Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.

Washington Irving
We feel that we are surrounded by the congregated bones of the great men of past times, who have filled history with their deeds, and the earth with their renown. And yet it almost provokes a smile at the vanity of human ambition to see how they are crowded together and jostled in the dust; what parsimony is observed in doling out a scanty nook, a gloomy corner, a little portion of earth, to those whom, when alive, kingdoms could not satisfy, and how many shapes and forms and artifices are devised to catch the casual notice of the passenger, and save from forgetfulness for a few short years a name which once aspired to occupy ages of the world's thought and admiration.

Washington Irving
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.

Washington Irving
I sometimes think one of the great blessings we shall enjoy in heaven, will be to receive letters by every post and never be obliged to reply to them.

Washington Irving
There is a certain artificial polish, a commonplace vivacity acquired by perpetually mingling in the beau monde; which, in the commerce of world, supplies the place of natural suavity and good-humour, but is purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of character.

Washington Irving
No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.

Washington Irving
Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.

Washington Irving
In his private dealings he was just. He treated friends and strangers, the rich and poor, the powerful and weak, with equity, and was beloved by the common people for the affability with which he received them, and listened to their complaints.

Washington Irving
I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.

Washington Irving
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.

Washington Irving
Free-livers on a small scale, who are prodigal within the compass of a guinea.

Washington Irving
Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? — No — no, 'tis your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.

Washington Irving
Thus 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.

Washington Irving
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.

Washington Irving
A tart temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edge tool that grows keener with constant use.

Washington Irving
Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.

Washington Irving
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
The great British Library — an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or pure English, undefiled wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.

Washington Irving
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.

Washington Irving
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?

Washington Irving