Washington Irving (1783 – 1859) was an American writer, historian, and diplomat. He was raised in Manhattan as part of the city’s merchant class. From an early age, he preferred drama and adventure stories to his studies. Following the War of 1812, he moved to England to try and save his family’s trading company. While he was there he published The Sketch Book of Geoffrey Crayon, Gent., which contains his two most famous works, The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. While he is best known for his short stories, he also wrote essays and biographies.
Quotes by Washington Irving…
The imagination is alternately a cheat and a dupe; nay, more, it is the most subtle of cheats, for it cheats itself, and becomes the dupe of its own delusions. It conjures up “airy nothings,” gives to them a “local habitation and a name,” and then bows to their control as implicitly as if they were realities.
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 a hollow show that must soon come to an end. Have the courage to appear poor and you disarm poverty of its sharpest sting.
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.