Top 160 Washington Irving Quotes (2025 Update)
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101. “He who thinks much says but little in proportion to his thoughts. He selects that language which will convey his ideas in the most explicit and direct manner.”

— Washington Irving

102. “Rising genius always shoots out its rays from among the clouds, but these will gradually roll away and disappear as it ascends to its steady luster.”

— Washington Irving

103. “After all, it is the divinity within that makes the divinity without...”

— Washington Irving

104. “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.”

— Washington Irving

105. “Into the space of one little hour sins enough may be conjured up by evil tongues to blast the fame of a whole life of virtue.”

— Washington Irving

106. “Not far from this village, perhaps about two miles, there is a little valley or rather lap of land among high hills, which is one of the quietest places in the whole world. A small brook glides through it, with just murmur enough to lull one to repose; and the occasional whistle of a quail or tapping of a woodpecker is almost the only sound that ever breaks in upon the uniform tranquillity.”

— Washington Irving

107. “Perhaps there never was a monument more characteristic of an age and people than the Alhambra; a rugged fortress without, a voluptuous palace within; war frowning from its battlements; poetry breathing throughout the fairy architecture of its halls.”

— Washington Irving

108. “It is but seldom that any one overt act produces hostilities between two nations; there exists, more commonly, a previous jealousy and ill will, a predisposition to take offense.”

— Washington Irving

109. “It is almost startling to hear this warning of departed time sounding among the tombs, and telling the lapse of the hour, which, like a billow, has rolled us onward towards the grave.”

— Washington Irving

110. “The scholar only knows how dear these silent, yet eloquent, companions of pure thoughts and innocent hours become in the season of adversity. When all that is worldly turns to dross around us, these only retain their steady value.”

— Washington Irving

111. “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

112. “Those who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trepass on that of others.”

— Washington Irving

113. “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

114. “There is a sacredness in tears. They are not the mark of weakness, but of power.”

— Washington Irving

115. “Poetry had breathed over and sanctified the land.”

— Washington Irving

116. “What earnest worker, with hand and brain for the benefit of his fellowmen, could desire a more pleasing recognition of his usefulness than the monument of a tree, ever growing, ever blooming, and ever bearing wholesome fruit?”

— Washington Irving

117. “The Englishman is too apt to neglect the present good in preparing against the possible evil.”

— Washington Irving

118. “Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for some stomachs; but honest good humor is the oil and wine of a merry meeting.”

— Washington Irving

119. “Washington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.”

— Washington Irving

120. “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.”

— Washington Irving

121. “Surely happiness is reflective, like the light of heaven; and every countenance, bright with smiles, and glowing with innocent enjoyment, is a mirror transmitting to others the rays of a supreme and ever-shining benevolence.”

— Washington Irving

122. “Besides, there is no encouragement for ghosts in most of our villages, for they have scarcely had time to finish their first nap and turn themselves in their graves, before their surviving friends have travelled away from the neighborhood; so that when they turn out at night to walk their rounds, they have no acquaintance left to call upon. This is perhaps the reason why we so seldom hear of ghosts except in our long-established Dutch communities.”

— Washington Irving

123. “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.”

— Washington Irving

124. “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.”

— Washington Irving

125. “The very difference of character in marriage produces a harmonious combination.”

— Washington Irving

126. “They are given to all kinds of marvellous beliefs; are subject to trances and visions; and frequently see strange sights, and hear music and voices in the air.”

— Washington Irving

127. “The natural effect of sorrow over the dead is to refine and elevate the mind.”

— Washington Irving

128. “No! no! My engagement is with no bride – the worms! the worms expect me! I am a dead man – I have been slain by robbers – my body lies at Wurtzburg – at midnight I am to be buried – the grave is waiting for me – I must keep my appointment!”

— Washington Irving

129. “But a wide sea voyage severs us at once. It makes us conscious of being cast loose from the secure anchorage of settled life, and sent adrift upon a doubtful world. It interposes a gulf, not merely imaginary, but real, between us and our homes – a gulf, subject to tempest, and fear, and uncertainty, rendering distance palpable, and return precarious.”

— Washington Irving

130. “A cunning politician often lurks under the clerical robe; things spiritual and things temporal are strangely jumbled together, like drugs on an apothecary’s shelf; and instead of a peaceful sermon, the simple seeker after righteousness has often a political pamphlet thrust down his throat, labeled with a pious text from Scripture.”

— Washington Irving

131. “And if unhappy in her love, her heart is like some fortress that has been captured, and sacked, and abandoned, and left desolate...”

— Washington Irving

132. “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

133. “There is something nobly simple and pure in a taste for the cultivation of forest trees.”

— Washington Irving

134. “Poetry is evidently a contagious complaint.”

— Washington Irving

135. “There is no character in the comedy of human life more difficult to play well than that of an old bachelor.”

— Washington Irving

136. “On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless! – but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!”

— Washington Irving

137. “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.”

— Washington Irving

138. “History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man.”

— Washington Irving

139. “It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man.”

— Washington Irving

140. “Such were our minor preparations for the journey, but above all we laid in an ample stock of good-humour, and a genuine disposition to be pleased; determining to travel in true contrabandista style; taking things as we found them, rough or smooth, and mingling with all classes and conditions in a kind of vagabond companionship. It is the true way to travel in Spain.”

— Washington Irving

141. “The revenue arising from his school was small, and would have been scarcely sufficient to furnish him with daily bread, for he was a huge feeder, and, though lank, had the dilating powers of an anaconda; but to help out his maintenance, he was, according to country custom in those parts, boarded and lodged at the houses of the farmers whose children he instructed.”

— Washington Irving

142. “Like most shortcuts, it was an ill-chosen route.”

— Washington Irving

143. “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.”

— Washington Irving

144. “The only happy author in this world is he who is below the care of reputation.”

— Washington Irving

145. “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

146. “I am always at a loss at how much to believe of my own stories.”

— Washington Irving

147. “Fortune, in fact, is a pestilent shrew, and, withal, an inexorable creditor; and though for a time she may be all smiles and courtesies, and indulge us in long credits, yet sooner or later she brings up her arrears with a vengeance, and washes out her scores with our tears.”

— Washington Irving

148. “My object is merely to give the reader a general introduction into an abode where, if so disposed, he may linger and loiter with me day by day until we gradually become familiar with all its localities.”

— Washington Irving

149. “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.”

— Washington Irving

150. “It is when the rich and well-educated and highly-privileged classes neglect their duties, when they neglect to study the interests, and conciliate the affections, and instruct the opinions, and champion the rights of the people, that the latter become discontented and turbulent, and fall into the hands of demagogues: the demagogue always steps in, where the patriot is wanting.”

— Washington Irving