Quotes By Washington Irving
Acting provides the fulfillment of never being fulfilled. You're never as good as you'd like to be. So there's always something to hope for.
Washington Irving
The easiest thing to do, whenever you fail, is to put yourself down by blaming your lack of ability for your misfortunes.
Washington Irving
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
The land of literature is a fairy land to those who view it at a distance, but, like all other landscapes, the charm fades on a nearer approach, and the thorns and briars become visible.
Washington Irving
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
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
It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end.
Washington Irving
Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.
Washington Irving
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
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
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble.
Washington Irving
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
Washington Irving
Temper never mellows with age, and a sharp tongue is the only edged tool that grows keener with constant use.
Washington Irving
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
Love is never lost. If not reciprocated, it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.
Washington Irving
Little minds are tamed and subdued by misfortune; but great minds rise above them.
Washington Irving
There is 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
There is in every true 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
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
Honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting, and there is no jovial companionship equal to that where the jokes are rather small and laughter abundant.
Washington Irving