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

— Washington Irving

Man passes away his name perishes from record and recollection his history is as a tale that is told and his very monument becomes a ruin.

— Washington Irving

My object is merely to give the reader a general introduction into an abode where, if so disposed, he may linger and loiter with me day by day until we gradually become familiar with all its localities.

— Washington Irving

No! No! My engagement is with no bride--the worms! The worms expect me! I am a dead man--I have been slain by robbers--my body lies at Würzburg--at midnight I am to be buried--the grave is waiting for me--I must keep my appointment!

— Washington Irving

One of the greatest and simplest tools for learning more and growing is doing more.

— Washington Irving

On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveler in relief against the sky, gigantic, and muffled in a cloak, Ichabod was horror-struck on perceiving that he was headless!--but his horror was still more increased on observing that the head, which should have rested on his shoulders, was carried before him on the pommel of his saddle!

— Washington Irving

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

— Washington Irving

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 imaginative 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.

— Washington Irving

Some minds seem almost to create themselves springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.

— Washington Irving

Sometimes he spent hours together in the great libraries of Paris, those catacombs of departed authors, rummaging among their hoards of dusty and obsolete works in quest of food for his unhealthy appetite. He was, in a manner, a literary ghoul, feeding in the channel-house of decayed literature.

— Washington Irving