How we delight to build our recollections upon some basis of reality,--a place, a country, a local habitation! how the events of life, as we look back upon them, have grown into the well-remembered background of the places where they fell upon us! Here is some sunny garden or summer lane, beautified and canonized forever, with the flood of a great joy; and here are dim and silent places,--rooms always shadowed and dark to us, whatever they may be to others,--where distress or death came once, and since then dwells forevermore.
Washington IrvingThose who are well assured of their own standing are least apt to trespass on that of others, whereas nothing is so offensive as the aspirings of vulgarity which thinks to elevate itself by humiliating its neighbor.
Washington IrvingWashington, in fact, had very little private life, but was eminently a public character.
Washington IrvingWhen friends grow cold, and the converse of intimates languishes into vapid civility and commonplace, these only continue the unaltered countenance of happier days, and cheer us with that true friendship which never deceived hope, nor deserted sorrow.
Washington IrvingAn inexhaustible good nature is one of the most precious gifts of heaven, spreading itself like oil over the troubled sea of thought, and keeping the mind smooth and equable in the roughest weather.
Washington IrvingIt was, as I have said, a fine autumnal day; the sky was clear and serene, and nature wore that rich and golden livery which we always associate with the idea of abundance. The forests had put on their sober brown and yellow, while some trees of the tendered kind had been nipped by the frosts into brilliant dyes of orange, purple, and scarlet.
Washington Irving