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.
Washington Irving Quotes
Whenever a man’s friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old.
After a man passes sixty, his mischief is mainly in his head.
Take away his pipe? You might as well take away his nose!
The natural principle of war is to do the most harm to our enemy with the least harm to ourselves; and this of course is to be effected by strategem.
Honest good humor 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 laughter abundant.
(Man’s) history is a tale that is told, and his very monument becomes a ruin.
History fades into fable; fact becomes clouded with doubt and controversy; the inscription moulders from the tablet; the statue falls from the pedestal. – Columns, arches, pyramids, what are they but heaps of sand, and their epitaphs but characters written in the dust?
A barking dog is often more useful than a sleeping lion.
There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others, however humble.
