Washington Irving Art Quotations

A woman's whole life is a history of the affections. The heart is her world: it is there her ambition strives for empire; it is there her avarice seeks for hidden treasures. She sends forth her sympathies on adventure; she embarks her whole soul on the traffic of affection; and if shipwrecked, her case is hopeless — for it is a bankruptcy of the heart.

Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assiduities of art, with which it would rear legitimate dulness to maturity; and to glory in the vigour and luxuriance of her chance productions.

There is an emanation from the heart in genuine hospitality which cannot be described, but is immediately felt and puts the stranger at once at his ease.

Of all the old festivals, however, that of Christmas awakens the strongest and most heartfelt associations. There is a tone of solemn and sacred feeling that blends with our conviviality, and lifts the sprit to a state of hallowed and elevated enjoyment.

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.

I profess not to know how women's hearts are wooed and won. To me they have always been matters of riddle and admiration.

If I can, by a lucky chance, in these uneasy days, rub out one wrinkle from the brow of care, or beguile the heavy heart of one moment of sadness; if I can, how and then, prompt a happier view of human nature, and make my reader more in good humor with his fellow-beings and himself, surely, I shall not have written in vain.

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.

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

The youthful freshness of a blameless heart.

Nature seems to delight in disappointing the assuduities of art, with which it would rear dulness to maturity, and to glory in the vigor and luxuriance of her chance productions. She scatters the seeds of genius to the winds, and though some may perish among the stony places of the world, and some may be choked by the thorns and brambles of early adversity, yet others will now and then strike root even in the clefts of the rock, struggle bravely up into sunshine, and spread over their sterile birthplace all the beauties of vegetation.

As the vine which has long twined its graceful foliage about the oak and been lifted by it into sunshine, will, when the hardy plant is rifted by the thunderbolt, cling round it with its caressing tendrils and bind up its shattered boughs, so is it beautifully ordered by Providence that woman, who is the mere dependent and ornament of man in his happier hours, should be his stay and solace when smitten with sudden calamity, winding herself into the rugged recesses of his nature, tenderly supporting the drooping head, and binding up the broken heart.

Ay, go to the grave of buried love and meditate! There settle the account with thy conscience for every past benefit unrequited - every past endearment unregarded, of that departed being, who can never, never, never return to be soothed by thy contr

Christmas! 'Tis the season for kindling the fire of hospitality in the hall, the genial fire of charity in the heart

The grate had been removed from the wide overwhelming fireplace, to make way for a fire of wood, in the midst of which was an enormous log glowing and blazing, and sending forth a vast volume of light and heat; this I understood was the Yule-log, which the Squire was particular in having brought in and illumined on a Christmas eve, according to ancient custom.

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

Others may write from the head, but he writes from the heart, and the heart will always understand him.

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.

He who wins a thousand common hearts is entitled to some renown; but he who keeps undisputed sway over the heart of a coquette is indeed a hero.

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

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

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