Washington Irving (1783–1859) was a popular American writer and diplomat. The “first American man of letters,” he is chiefly remembered as a historian and as the writer of romantic sketches and tales. He was influential in the development of the short story form and helped gain international respect for the fledgling American literature.
Born into a prosperous family in New York City, Irving studied law, visited Rome, Paris, the Netherlands, and London, and on his return in 1806 was admitted to the Bar.
Irving’s Salmagundi (1808,) a series of satirical essays on the state of the theatre, was followed by the burlesque A History of New York (1809,) supposedly written by a Dutch New Yorker named Diedrich Knickerbocker. Despite the pseudonym, it made him well known in New York.
Irving served as an officer in the 1812 War between the U.S. and U.K. and lived in Europe 1815–32. Under the pseudonym Geoffrey Crayon, he wrote The Sketch Book (1819–20,) a collection that contains his famous tales, “The Spectre Bridegroom,” “Rip Van Winkle,” and “The Legend of Sleepy Hollow.”
Irving produced another collection, Tales of a Traveller (1824.) His stay in Spain 1826–29 produced the studies The History of the Life and Voyages of Christopher Columbus (1828) and The Conquest of Granada (1829.) Upon his return to New York in 1832, Irving published A Tour on the Prairie (1835) and The Adventures of Captain Bonneville, USA (1837.)
Irving was the U.S. ambassador to Spain 1842–46. He completed his Life of George Washington (1855–59) shortly before his death.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by 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
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
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Dignity
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.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Beauty
A mother is the truest friend we have, when trials, heavy and sudden fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity; when friends, who rejoiced with us in our sunshine desert us; when troubles thicken around us, still will she cling to us, and endeavor by her kind precepts and counsels to dissipate the clouds of darkness, and cause peace to return to our hearts.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Mothers, Friendship
There is a remembrance of the dead, to which we turn even from the charms of the living. These we would not exchange for the song of pleasure or the bursts of revelry.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Memory
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
In civilized life, where the happiness and indeed almost the existence of man, depends on the opinion of his fellow men. He is constantly acting a studied part.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Acting, Actors
The sorrow for the dead is the only sorrow from which we refuse to be divorced. Every other wound we seek to heal—every other affliction to forget: but this wound we consider it a duty to keep open—this affliction we cherish and brood over in solitude.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Grief, Grieving, Bereavement
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
Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Genius
The dullest observer must be sensible of the order and serenity prevalent in those households where the occasional exercise of a beautiful form of worship in the morning gives, as it were, the keynote to every temper for the day, and attunes every spirit to harmony.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Day
An inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Weather, Humor, Attitude
There is never jealousy where there is not strong regard.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Jealousy
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.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Affection, Women, Love
The tongue is the only instrument that gets sharper with use.
—Washington Irving
Topics: One liners, Communication
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 surface. He, however, 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.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Society
The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Sorrow, Sadness
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
Enthusiasts soon understand each other.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Enthusiasm
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
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.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Home
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Love
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
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: Mind, Difficulties, The Mind, Adversity
Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who has 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.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Wife
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
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
Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No—no, your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Diet
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
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