A curtain lecture is worth all the sermons in the world for teaching the virtue of patience and long suffering.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Patience
As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak, and been lifted by it in sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils, and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity; winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head and binding up the broken heart.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Woman
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
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
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
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
The love of a delicate female is always shy and silent. Even when fortunate, she scarcely breathes it to herself; but when otherwise, she buries it in the recesses of her bosom, and there lets it cower and brood among the ruins of her peace.
—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
Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Christmas
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
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
Great minds have purposes; others have wishes.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Purpose, Wishes, Dedication, Commitment, Goals, Aspirations, One liners, Mind
A tart temper never mellows with age; and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener and sharper with constant use.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Criticism, Anger, Speech, Temper
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Marriage, Husbands
Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Lawyers, Law
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
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
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
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
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
Every desire bears its death in its very gratification.—Curiosity languishes under repeated stimulants, and novelties cease to excite surprise, until at length we do not wonder even at a miracle.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Desire
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, Love, Women
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
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 never jealousy where there is not strong regard.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Jealousy
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
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune, but great minds rise above it.
—Washington Irving
Topics: Challenges, Courage, Misfortune, Adversity
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
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
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
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