Inspirational Quotes by Washington Irving (American Author)

Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Challenges, Courage, Misfortune, Adversity

Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the sprit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Christmas

Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Lawyers, Law

The grave buries every error, covers every defect, extinguishes every resentment.—From its peaceful bosom spring none but fond regrets and tender recollections.—Who can look down upon the grave of an enemy, and not feel a compunctious throb that he should have warred with the poor handful of dust that lies moldering before him.
—Washington Irving

Critics are a kind of freebooters in the republic of letters, who, like deer, goats, and diverse other graminivorous animals, gain subsistence by gorging upon buds and leaves of the young shrubs of the forest, thereby robbing them of their verdure and retarding their progress to maturity.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Critics

A father may turn his back on his child; brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies; husbands may desert their wives, and wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all; in. good repute, in bad repute, in the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother still loves on, and still hopes that her child may turn from his evil ways, and repent; still she remembers the infant smiles that once filled her bosom with rapture, the merry laugh, the joyful shout of his childhood, the opening promise of his youth; and she can never be brought to think him all unworthy.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Mother, Mothers

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
Topics: Evils

A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Action, One liners, Usefullness

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellowman.
—Washington Irving
Topics: History

There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Dignity

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
Topics: Tears, Crying

History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders 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
Topics: Change

The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Mothers

The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection; and will, in turn, be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Heroes, Heroism, Heroes/Heroism

There is in every woman’s heart a spark of heavenly fire which lies dormant in the broad daylight of prosperity, but which kindles up and beams and blazes in the dark hour of adversity.
—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
Topics: Letters

No man knows what the wife of his bosom is—what a ministering angel she is, until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Wife

The paternal hearth, that rallying place of the affections.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Home

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
Topics: Age, Aging

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
Topics: Adversity, Mind, The Mind, Difficulties

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
Topics: Libraries

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
Topics: War

Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.
—Washington Irving
Topics: One liners, Mind, Dedication, Purpose, Commitment, Goals, Aspirations, Wishes

It is the divine attribute of the imagination, 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.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Imagination

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Love

There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt and puts the stranger at once at his ease.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Friendship

There is one in the world who feels for him who is sad a keener pang than he feels for himself; there is one to whom reflected joy is better than that which comes direct; there is one who rejoices in another’s honor, more than in any which is one’s own; there is one on whom another’s transcendent excellence sheds no beam but that of delight; there is one who hides another’s infirmities more faithfully than one’s own; there is one who loses all sense of self in the sentiment of kindness, tenderness, and devotion to another; that one is woman.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Woman

Good temper, like a sunny day, sheds a brightness over everything; it is the sweetener of toil and the soother of disquietude.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Temper

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Soul

There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Jealousy

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