272 Quotes by Washington Irving

Wit, after all, is a mighty tart, pungent ingredient, and much too acid for some stomachs; but honest good humour 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 the laughter abundant.

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

Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England.

His appetite for the marvelous, and his powers of digesting it, were equally extraordinary.

The love of a mother is never exhausted. It never changes – it never tires – it endures through all; in good repute, in bad repute. In the face of the world’s condemnation, a mother’s love still lives on.

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.

In civilized life, where the happiness, and indeed almost the existence, of man depends so much upon the opinion of his fellow men, he is constantly acting a studied part.

Society is like a lawn, where every roughness is smoothed, every bramble eradicated, and where the eye is delighted by the smiling verdure of a velvet surface.

A father may turn his back on his child, brothers and sisters may become inveterate enemies, husbands may desert their wives, wives their husbands. But a mother’s love endures through all.