AmericanWriter called the first American man of letters. Best known for the short stories The Legend of Sleepy Hollow and Rip Van Winkle. 1783-1859
Popularity:
“It embarrasses me to think of all those years I was buying silk suits and alligator shoes that were hurting my feet; cars that I just parked, and the dust would just build up on them.”
“Who ever hears of fat men heading a riot, or herding together in turbulent mobs? No -- no, your lean, hungry men who are continually worrying society, and setting the whole community by the ears.”
“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”
“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”
“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.”
“The great British Library --an immense collection of volumes of all ages and languages, many of which are now forgotten, and most of which are seldom read: one of these sequestered pools of obsolete literature to which modern authors repair, and draw buckets full of classic lore, or ''pure English, undefiled'' wherewith to swell their own scanty rills of thought.”
“There is nothing in England that exercises a more delightful spell over my imagination than the lingerings of the holiday customs and rural games of former times. They recall the pictures my fancy used to draw in the May morning of life, when as yet I only knew the world through books, and believed it to be all that poets had painted it; and they bring with them the flavour of those honest days of yore, in which, perhaps with equal fallacy, I am apt to think the world was more home-bred, social, and joyous than at present.”
“Some minds seem almost to create themselves, springing up under every disadvantage and working their solitary but irresistible way through a thousand obstacles.”
