Washington Irving
Washington Irving
Washington Irvingwas an American short story writer, essayist, biographer, historian, and diplomat of the early 19th century. He is best known for his short stories "Rip Van Winkle"and "The Legend of Sleepy Hollow", both of which appear in his book The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent. His historical works include biographies of George Washington, Oliver Goldsmith and Muhammad, and several histories of 15th-century Spain dealing with subjects such as Christopher Columbus, the Moors and the Alhambra. Irving served as...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionNovelist
Date of Birth3 April 1783
CityNew York City, NY
CountryUnited States of America
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.
Man passes away; his name perishes from record and recollection; his history is as a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.
No man knows what the wife of his bosom is until he has gone with her through the fiery trials of this world.
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.
All these, however, were mere terrors of the night, phantoms of the mind that walk in darkness; and though he had seen many spectres in his time, and been more than once beset by Satan in divers shapes, in his lonely pre-ambulations, yet daylight put an end to all these evils; and he would have passed a pleasent life of it, in despite of the devil and all his works, if his path had not been crossed by a being that causes more perplexity to mortal man than ghosts, goblins, and the whole race of witches put together, and that was - a woman.
after a man passes 60 , his mischief is mainly in his head
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.
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.
Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.
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.
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.
It's a fair wind that blew men to ale.
A woman is more considerate in affairs of love than a man; because love is more the study and business of her life.
History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.