Washington Irving

Jealous people poison their own banquet and then eat it

There are moments of mingled sorrow and tenderness, which hallow the caresses of affection.

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

Nothing impresses the mind with a deeper feeling of loneliness than to tread the silent and deserted scene of former throng and pageant.

There is an enduring tenderness in the love of a mother to a son that trancends all other affections of the heart

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.

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.

Some minds corrode and grow inactive under the loss of personal liberty; others grow morbid and irritable; but it is the nature of the poet to become tender and imaginitive in the loneliness of confinement. He banquets upon the honey of his own thoughts, and, like the captive bird, pours forth his soul in melody.

To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace.

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.

Those men are most apt to be obsequious and conciliating abroad, who are under the discipline of shrews at home.

Young lawyers attend the courts, not because they have business there, but because they have no business.

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

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.