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
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
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
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
A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man; because love is more the study and business of her life.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Love
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
Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Purpose, Commitment, Dedication, Goals, One liners, Aspirations
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
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Dignity
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Challenges, Courage, Adversity
How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!
—Washington Irving
Topics: Kindness
Redundancy of language is never found with deep reflection. Verbiage may indicate observation, but not thinking. He who thinks much, says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner. He tries to compress as much thought as possible into a few words. On the contrary, the man who talks everlastingly and promiscuously, who seems to have an exhaustless magazine of sound, crowds so many words into his thoughts that he always obscures, and very frequently conceals them.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Style
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
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
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Husbands, Marriage
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
A curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtue of patience and long suffering.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Patience
Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Marriage
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: Love, Women
Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former flow and pageant.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Past
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
There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse! As I have often found in traveling in a stagecoach, that it is often a comfort to shift one’s position, and be bruised in a new place.
—Washington Irving
How easy it is for one benevolent being to diffuse pleasure around him; and how truly is a kind heart a fountain of gladness, making everything in its vicinity to freshen into smiles!
—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
Topics: Libraries
Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Wealth
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: Bereavement
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
A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Action, One liners
It was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tenderer kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Autumn
There is a certain artificial polish and address acquired by mingling in the beau monde, which, in the commerce of the world, supplies the place of natural suavity and good humor; but it is too often purchased at the expense of all original and sterling traits of character.
—Washington Irving
Good temper, like a sunny day, sheds a brightness over everything; it is the sweetener of toil and the soother of disquietude.
—Washington Irving
By a land of fashionable discipline, the eye is taught to brighten, the lip to smile, and the whole countenance to emanate with the semblance of friendly welcome, while the bosom is unwarmed by a single spark of genuine kindness and good-will.
—Washington Irving
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
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
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
Caroline Kennedy American Attorney, Diplomat
Ernest Hemingway American Author
Garrison Keillor American Broadcaster, Writer
Nathaniel Parker Willis American Poet, Playwright
Helen Keller American Author
Robert Fulghum American Unitarian Universalist Author
Bill Bryson American Humorist
Dale Carnegie American Self-Help Author
Jim Bishop American Journalist
Elisabeth Elliot American Christian Author