Washington Irving Quotes

Christmas is the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial flame of charity in the heart.

There is a certain relief in change even though it be from bad to worse as I have found in travelling in a stagecoach that it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.

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.

He is indeed the true enchanter, whose spell operates, not upon the senses, but upon the imagination and the heart.

The idol of today pushes the hero of yesterday out of our recollection and will in turn be supplanted by his successor of tomorrow.

Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the charnel-house of decayed literature.

Love is never lost. If not reciprocated it will flow back and soften and purify the heart.

How easy is it 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.

Balt Van Tassel was an easy indulgent soul; he loved his daughter better even than his pipe, and, like a reasonable man and an excellent father, let her have her way in everything.

In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance.

To the traveller imbued with a feeling for the historical and poetical, so inseparately interwined in the annals of romantic Spain, the Alhambra is a much an object of devotion as is the Caaba to all true Moslems. How many legends and traditions, true and fabulous, - how many songs and ballards, Arabian and Spanish, of love and war and chivalry, are associated with this Oriental pile!

There is a certain relief in change even though it be from bad to worse as I have found in traveling in a stagecoach it is often a comfort to shift one's position and be bruised in a new place.