“It's a fair wind that blew men to ale.”
“When friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.”
Source: The works of Washington Irving
“A mother is the truest friend we have.”
“The tie which links mother and child is of such pure and immaculate strength as to be never violated.”
“The paternal hearth, the rallying-place of the affections.”
“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.”
Source: Old Christmas: From the Sketch Book of Washington Irving
“Speculation is the romance of trade, and casts contempt upon on all its sober realities. It renders the stock-jobber a magician, and the exchange a region of enchantment.”
Source: The Knickerbocker: Or, New York Monthly Magazine
“He who wins a thousand common hearts is entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.”
Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving in One Volume
“Men are always doomed to be duped, not so much by the arts of the other as by their own imagination. They are always wooing goddesses, and marrying mere mortals.”
Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving in One Volume
“There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that trancends all other affections of the heart”
Source: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon
“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.”
Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more
“Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)
“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.”
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveler, The Alhambra, Woolfert’s Roost & The Crayon Papers Collections (Illustrated): The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Old Christmas, The Voyage, Roscoe, The Widow’s Retinue, An Old Soldier, Mountjoy, Don Juan, Woolfert’s Roost, Tales of The Alhambra and many more
“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.”
Source: Works of Washington Irving
“If I can, by a lucky chance, in these uneasy days, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness; if I can, how and then, prompt a happier view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, I shall not have written in vain.”
“The literary world is made up of little confederacies, each looking upon its own members as the lights of the universe; and considering all others as mere transient meteors, doomed to soon fall and be forgotten, while its own luminaries are to shine steadily into immortality.”
Source: Bracebridge Hall ; Tales of a Traveller ; The Alhambra
“There rise authors now and then, who seem proof against the mutability of language, because they have rooted themselves in the unchanging principles of human nature.”
Source: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. – The Complete Collection: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Voyage, Roscoe, A Royal Poet, A Sunday in London and many more (Illustrated)
“Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven.”
Source: History of New York. Sketch book. Bracebridge Hall
“A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.”
Source: Works of Washington Irving
“A woman's whole life is a history of the affections.”
“He who would greatly deserve must greatly dare.”
Source: Biographies and Miscellaneous Papers ... Collected and arranged by P. Irving
“A mother is the truest friend we have when trials, heavy and sudden, fall upon us; when adversity takes the place of prosperity.”
“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 tendered kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.”
Source: Rip Van Winkle: The legend of Sleepy Hollow and other tales
“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.”
Source: The complete works of Washington Irving in one volume with a memoir of the author
“There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.”
Source: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Esq. (Wasington 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.”
Source: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories: Or, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent.
“There is certainly something in angling that tends to produce a serenity of the mind.”
“The dance, like most dances after supper, was a merry one; some of the older folks joined in it, and the squire himself figured down several couple with a partner, with whom he affirmed he had danced at every Christmas for nearly half a century.”
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveler, The Alhambra, Woolfert’s Roost & The Crayon Papers Collections (Illustrated): The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Old Christmas, The Voyage, Roscoe, The Widow’s Retinue, An Old Soldier, Mountjoy, Don Juan, Woolfert’s Roost, Tales of The Alhambra and many more
“Good temper, like a sunny day, sheds a ray of brightness over everything; it is the sweetener of toil and the soother of disquietude!”
“There are moments of mingled sorrow and tenderness, which hallow the caresses of affection.”
Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more
“Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulness to maturity; and to glory in the vigour and luxuriance of her chance productions.”
Source: The Beauties
“He 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.”
Source: The works of Washington Irving
“Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it”
“The only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.”
Source: Bracebridge Hall ; Tales of a Traveller ; The Alhambra
“Christmas is here, Merry old Christmas, Gift-bearing Christmas, Day of grand memories, King of the year!”
“There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.”
“Marriage is the torment of one, the felicity of two, the strife and enmity of three.”
“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?”
Source: The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories From the Sketch Book
“For what is history, but... huge libel on human nature, to which we industriously add page after page, volume after volume, as if we were holding up a monument to the honor, rather than the infamy of our species.”
“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.”
Source: The complete works of Washington Irving in one volume with a memoir of the author
“How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in
obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.”
Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more
“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”
Source: The Complete Short Stories of Washington Irving: The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall, Tales of a Traveler, The Alhambra, Woolfert’s Roost & The Crayon Papers Collections (Illustrated): The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, Old Christmas, The Voyage, Roscoe, The Widow’s Retinue, An Old Soldier, Mountjoy, Don Juan, Woolfert’s Roost, Tales of The Alhambra and many more
“[I]n the gloomy month of February.... The Deserts of Arabia are not more dreary and inhospitable than the streets of London at such a time.”
Source: Delphi Complete Works of Washington Irving (Illustrated)
“Believe me, the man who earns his bread by the sweat of his brow, eats oftener a sweeter morsel, however coarse, than he who procures it by the labor of his brains.”
Source: The Complete Tales of Washington Irving
“A few amber clouds floated in the sky without a breath of air to move them. The horizon was of a fine golden tint, changing gradually into a pure apple-green, and from that into the deep blue of the mid-heaven.”
Source: Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
“There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.”
Source: The Complete Works of Washington Irving: Short Stories, Plays, Historical Works, Poetry and Autobiographical Writings (Illustrated): The Entire Opus of the Prolific American Writer, Biographer and Historian, Including The Legend of Sleepy Hollow, Rip Van Winkle, The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Bracebridge Hall and many more
“There is a certain relief in change, even though it be from bad to worse.”
“The slanders of the pen pierce to the heart; they rankle longest in the noblest spirits; they dwell ever present in the mind and render it morbidly sensitive to the most trifling collision.”
Source: Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
“The Englishman is too apt to neglect the present good in preparing against the possible evil.”
Source: The Knickerbocker: Or, New-York Monthly Magazine
“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.”
Source: Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Other Stories
