Irving Quotes

What is at stake is civilization and humanity, nothing less. The idea that everything is permitted, as Nietzsche put it, rests on the premise of nihilism and has nihilistic implications. I will not pretend that the case against nihilism and for civilization is an easy one to make. We are here confronting the most fundamental of philosophical questions, on the deepest levels. In short, the matter of pornography and obscenity is not a trivial one, and only superficial minds can take a bland and untroubled view of it. ~ Irving Kristol

When time passes, it's the people who knew you whom you want to see; they're the ones you can talk to. When enough time passes, what's it matter what they did to you? ~ John Irving

My father died and left me his blessing and his business. His blessing brought no money into my pocket, and as to his business, it soon deserted me, for I was busy writing poetry, and could not attend to law, and my clients, though they had great respect for my talents, had no faith in a poetical attorney. ~ Washington Irving

Act strenuously, would appear to be our faith, and right thinking will take care of itself. ~ Irving Babbitt

It is not poverty so much as pretense that harasses a ruined man - the struggle between a proud mind and an empty purse - the keeping up of a hollow show that must soon come to an end. ~ Washington Irving

There is a serene and settled majesty to woodland scenery that enters into the soul and delights and elevates it, and fills it with noble inclinations. ~ Washington Irving

MAYBE YOU SHOULD BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR. AT LEAST, YOU GET TO READ STUFF THAT'S WRITTEN BY PEOPLE WHO CAN WRITE! YOU DON'T HAVE TO DO ANYTHING TO BE AN ENGLISH MAJOR, YOU DON'T NEED ANY SPECIAL TALENT, YOU JUST HAVE TO PAY ATTENTION TO WHAT SOMEONE WANTS YOU TO SEE - TO WHAT MAKES SOMEONE ANGRIEST, OR THE MOST EXCITED IN SOME OTHER WAY. IT'S SO EASY!; I THINK THAT'S WHY THERE ARE SO MANY ENGLISH MAJORS! ~ John Irving

I can get obsessed by anything if I look at it long enough. That's the curse of being a photographer. ~ Irving Penn

A poet is deeply conflicted and it's in his work that he reconciles those deep conflicts. The place is the harbor. It doesn't set the world in order, you know, it's the place of reconciliation. It's the Consolamentum, the kiss of peace. ~ Irving Layton

People need religion. It's a vehicle for a moral tradition. A crucial role. Nothing can take its place. ~ Irving Kristol

Unforgettable, that's what you are
Unforgettable though near or far
Like a song of love that clings to me
How the thought of you does things to me
Never before has someone been more
Unforgettable in every way
And forever more, that's how you'll stay
That's why, darling, it's incredible
That someone so unforgettable
Thinks that I am unforgettable too ~ Irving Gordon

This prolific and inventive photographer (Edward Steichen) must be given credit for virtually inventing modern fashion photography, and as the tohousands of high-quality original prints in the Conde Nast archives prove, only Irving Penn and Richard Avedon have since emerged as serious historical rivals. ~ William A. Ewing

It was a feeling with nowhere to go. Was that what love was, and how it came to you
leaving you no options for its use? ~ John Irving

You can't say you're going to ban something in the name of good taste, because then you have directed someone to play the role of good-taste police. We [Americans] permit bad taste in this country. In fact, we even encourage it. ~ John Irving

Studying the world's oldest writing for the first time compels you to wonder about what writing is and how it came about more than five thousand years ago and what the world might have looked like without it.

Writing as I would define it serves to record language by means of an agreed set of symbols that enable a message to be played back like a wax cylinder recording.

The reader's eye runs over the signs and tells the brain how each is pronounced and the inner message springs into life. ~ Irving Finkel

I sometimes think one of the great blessings we shall enjoy in heaven, will be to receive letters by every post and never be obliged to reply to them. ~ Washington Irving

History is but a kind of Newgate calendar, a register of the crimes and miseries that man has inflicted on his fellow-man. ~ Washington Irving

These workers," said Mendes with a gentle sweep of his arm, "have a hard life of it. When illness comes they have no money for a doctor. The food for tomorrow comes from today's labour, and hard labour it is, too. Their houses, as you see, are small and poor; they are never more than a stone's throw away from privation and want. They've made a bad bargain with life; they need the thought of God to comfort them. ~ Irving Stone

... there was no better company for an especially personal revelation than the company of virtual strangers. ~ John Irving

Recorded music is more a marketing tool than a revenue source. ~ Irving Azoff

Life is ten percent what you make it and ninety percent how you take it. ~ Irving Berlin

DON'T GIVE ME THE SHIVERS,' Owen said. ~ John Irving

As he reached the door of the chapel and turned back for a last look, he saw that the Virgin too was sad and lonely; the most alone human being God ever put on earth. ~ Irving Stone

I do know where I'm going and it's just a matter of finding the language to get there. ~ John Irving

I made some fresh pasta with a neat machine Frank brought from New York; it flattens the dough in sheets and cuts the pasta into any shape you want. It's important to have toys like that, if you live in Maine. ~ John Irving

All alone by the telephone. ~ Irving Berlin

Many of the benefits of CBT (cognitive behavioral therapy) can be obtained without going into therapy. There are a number of self-help books, CDs and computer programs that have been used to treat depression and some of these have been tested in clinical trials with positive results. I can particularly recommend these two books. One is 'Control Your Depression', the lead author of which is Peter Lewinsohn, a Professor of Psychology at the University of Oregon ... The other book that I can recommend with confidence is 'Feeling Good' by the psychiatrist David Burns. 'Control Your Depression' emphasizes behavioral techniques like increasing pleasant activities, improving social skills and learning to relax. 'Feeling Good' puts greater emphasis on changing the way people think about themselves. But both books include both cognitive and behavioral techniques. ~ Irving Kirsch

You know, people think you have to be dumb to skip rope for 45 minutes. No, you have to be able to imagine something else. While you're skipping rope, you have to be able to see something else. ~ John Irving

It was not out of love that I wanted to meet my father, but out of the darkest curiosity - to be able to recognize, in myself, what evil I might be capable of. ~ John Irving

Forget it, Louis, no Civil War picture ever made a nickel. ~ Irving Thalberg

Meaning Michael Milton; meaning the whole thing. ~ John Irving

I get up early. I like to read a little before anyone but the dog is up. I also like to read at night, not in bed but just before I go to bed. ~ John Irving

There was no solution," Tolstoy writes in Anna Karenina, "but the universal solution that life gives to all questions, even the most complex and insoluble. That answer is: one must live in the needs of the day - that is forget oneself. ~ John Irving

The incontrovertible evidence is that Hitler ordered on November 30, 1941, that there was to be 'no liquidation of the Jews.' ~ David Irving

If doctors just spent more time with their patients so they felt more reassured, that might help. ~ Irving Kirsch

Are you sure?" he asked in a low voice. "Because if I had the chance ... I would spend every moment of every day with you. ~ Alexandra Monir

Most of the time the ones who dislike the pictures the most confirm to me that the picture has hit home and is probably truer than I know. Nobody minds a boring picture, they mind a picture that has gotten to the soft core. ~ Irving Penn

And also don't forget, the reason opportunity is often missed is that it usually comes disguised as hard work. ~ Clifford Irving

Novelty is always welcome but talking pictures are just a fad. ~ Irving Thalberg

Her mighty lakes, like oceans of liquid silver; her mountains, with bright aerial tints; her valleys, teeming with wild fertility; her tremendous cataracts, thundering in their solitudes; her boundless plains, waving with spontaneous verdure; her broad, deep rivers, rolling in solemn silence to the ocean; her trackless forests, where vegetation puts forth all its magnificence; her skies, kindling with the magic of summer clouds and glorious sunshine - no, never need an American look beyond his own country for the sublime and beautiful of natural scenery. ~ Washington Irving

You take every opportunity given you in this world, even if you have too many opportunities. One day, the opportunities stop, you know. ~ John Irving

I'm probably one of the most competitive people ever. ~ Kyrie Irving

To look upon its grass grown yard, where the sunbeams seem to sleep so quietly, one would think that there at least the dead might rest in peace. ~ Washington Irving

So we do not lose heart...Though our outer nature is wasting away, our inner nature is being renewed every day. For this slight momentary affliction is preparing us for an eternal weight of glory beyond all comparison, because we look not to the things that are seen but to the things that are unseen; for the things that are seen are transient, but the things that are unseen are eternal...So we are always of good courage. We know that while we are at home in the body we are away from the Lord, for we walk by faith, not by sight. We are of good courage, and we would rather be away from the body and at home with the Lord. So whether we are at home or away, we make it our aim to please him. (Second Corinthians) ~ John Irving

When I was still in prep school - 14, 15 - I started keeping notebooks, journals. I started writing, almost like landscape drawing or life drawing. I never kept a diary, I never wrote about my day and what happened to me, but I described things. ~ John Irving

I don't really set out to explore grand themes. I set out to tell a story. And one I have to be able to imagine right through. ~ John Irving

Canadians look down on the United States and consider it Hell. They are right to do so. Canada is to the United States what, in Dante's scheme, Limbo is to Hell. ~ Irving Layton

In the hospital, Jenny Fields felt she was making up for lost time; she was discovering that people weren't much more mysterious, or much more attractive, than clams. ~ John Irving

Keep passing the open windows. ~ John Irving

Robespierre, however, was not the type of leader finally destined to emerge from the Revolution. ~ Irving Babbitt

I realize that a writer's business is setting fire to Piggy Sneed-and trying to save him-again and again; forever. ~ John Irving

You cannot drive with your eyes in the rear-view mirror ... But dignity is difficult to maintain. Stamina requires constant upkeep. Repetition is boring. And you pay for grace. ~ John Irving

I suppose I try to look for those things where the world turns on you. It's every automobile accident, every accident at a party, you're having a good time until suddenly you're not. ~ John Irving

We tend to think that if you don't know where you're goin, you don't belong where you are. ~ John Irving

There's not much to know about me other than I like meeting artists and I like yakking. ~ Irving Sandler

When he and Wally stopped laughing, Homer said, 'I've never seen the ocean, you know.'
'Candy, did you hear that?' Wally asked, but Candy had released herself with her brief laughter and she was sound asleep. 'You've never seen the ocean?' Wally asked Homer.
'That's right,' said Homer Wells.
'That's not funny,' said Wally seriously.
'Right,' Homer said.
A little later, Wally said, 'You want to drive for a while?'
'I don't know how to drive,' Homer said.
'Really?' Wally asked. And later still – it was almost midnight – Wally asked, 'Uh, have you ever been with a girl – made love to one, you know?' But Homer Wells had also felt released: he had laughed out loud with his new friends. The young but veteran insomniac had fallen asleep. Would Wally have been surprised to know that Homer hadn't laughed out loud with friends before, either? ~ John Irving

As for the river, it just kept moving,as river do
as rivers do. Under the logs, the body of the young Canadian moved with the river, which jostled him to and fro
to and fro. If, at this moment in time Twisted River also appeared restless, even impatient, maybe the river itself wanted the boy's body to move on, too, move on, too. ~ John Irving

Language is the principal tool with which we communicate; but when words are used carelessly or mistakenly, what was intended to advance mutual understanding may in fact hinder it; our instrument becomes our burden ~ Irving Copi

Small minds are subdued by misfortunes, greater minds overcome them. ~ Washington Irving

Most dump kids are believers; maybe you have to believe in something when you see so many discarded things. ~ John Irving

The silent workings, and still more the explosions, of human passion which bring to light the darker elements of man's nature present to the philosophical observer considerations of intrinsic interest; while to the jurist, the study of human nature and human character with its infinite varieties, especially as affecting the connection between motive and action, between irregular desire or evil disposition and crime itself, is equally indispensable and difficult." - Wills on Circumstantial Evidence. ~ Henry B. Irving

I wanted the figures to be real and believable so that you would feel that with their very next breath would begin life itself. ~ Irving Stone

Melville's Moby-Dick - ~ John Irving

Religion will never show the way. ~ Irving Stone

But we artists have to be selfish you know, after all, with each painting, we die a little. ~ Irving Stone

The rate of interest acts as a link between income-value and capital-value. ~ Irving Fisher

I still believe in you, as a writer, but the only stuff we ever had in common doesn't travel very far."
"What stuff is that?" he'd asked her.
"We're completely at ease being naked in front of strangers and total fuckheads", she'd told him. Maybe that's part of what being a writer entails, Danny Baciagalupo found himself thinking on that rainy spring night in Iowa city. ~ John Irving

In the present day, when popular literature is running into the low levels of life, and luxuriating on the vices and follies of mankind; and when the universal pursuit of gain is trampling down the early growth of poetic feeling, and wearing out the verdure of the soul, I question whether it would not be of service for the reader occasionally to turn to these records of prouder times and loftier modes of thinking; and to steep himself to the very lips in old Spanish romance. ~ Washington Irving

There is a healthful hardiness about real dignity that never dreads contact and communion with others however humble. ~ Washington Irving

Casey recalled how Gail defended herself in the parking lot of the English & Philosophy Building from the unwanted attentions of a lecherous fellow student, who shall remain nameless. 'Please leave me alone,' Ms Godwin warned the offending student, 'or I shall be forced to wound you with a weapon you can ill afford to be wounded by in a town this small.' The threat was most mysterious, not to mention writerly, but the oafish lecher was not easily deterred. 'And what might that weapon be, little lady?' the lout allegedly asked. 'Gossip,' Gail Godwin replied. ~ John Irving

I have no academic qualifications whatsoever. ~ David Irving

When I was young, Monsieur," he said, "I used to think a lot about God. But He seems to have grown thinner with the years. He is still in that cornfield you painted, and in the sunset by Montmajour, but when I think about men ... and the world they have made ... " "I know, Roulin, but I feel more and more that we must not judge God by this world. It's just a study that didn't come off. What can you do in a study that has gone wrong, if you are fond of the artist? You do not find much to criticize; you hold your tongue. But you have a right to ask for something better." "Yes, that's it," exclaimed Roulin, "something just a tiny bit better." "We should have to see some other work by the same hand before we judge him. This world was evidently botched up in a hurry on one of his bad days, when the artist did not have his wits about him. ~ Irving Stone

I sometimes think that what I do as a writer is make a kind of colouring book, where all the lines are there, and then you put in the colour. ~ John Irving

I had acquired an undeniable mystique - if only to the Bancroft butt-room boys. Don't forget: Miss Frost was an older woman, and that goes a long way with boys - even if the older woman has a penis! ~ John Irving

It's a lovely day today
So whatever you've got to do
You've got a lovely day to do it in, that's true
And I hope whatever you've got to do
Is something that can be done by two
For I'd really like to stay
It's a lovely day today
And whatever you've got to do
I'd be so happy to be doing it with you
But if you've got something that must be done
And it can only be done by one
There is nothing more to say
Except it's a lovely day for saying
It's a lovely day! ~ Irving Berlin

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. ~ Washington Irving

Wherever the TV glows, there sits someone who isn't reading. ~ John Irving

On his bedside table, between the reading lamp and the telephone, was his battered copy of David Copperfield. Homer didn't have to open the book to know how the story began. "Whether I shall turn out to be the hero of my own life, or whether that station will be held by anybody else, these pages must show," he recited from memory. ~ John Irving

It's because even a good man can't always be right, that we need ... rules. ~ John Irving

Gos bless America, my home sweet home. ~ Irving Berlin

Nurse Angela, with her love of cats and orphans, once remarked of Homer Wells that the boy must adore the name she gave him because he fought so hard not to lose it. ~ John Irving

Women know when men don't desire them: ghosts and witches, deities and demons, angels of death - even virgins, even ordinary women. They always know; women can tell when you have stopped desiring them. ~ John Irving

I thought that my movie career was finished. I was quite happy to dedicate myself 100% to the theater. Surprisingly enough, I've never gotten so many work offers. It's so exciting, this feeling of a new beginning after 40. ~ Amy Irving

Just because you're sober, don't think you're a good driver, Cookie. ~ John Irving

A beautiful print is a thing in itself, not just a halfway house on the way to the page. ~ Irving Penn

Nothing can be more touching than to behold a soft and tender female, who had been all weakness and dependence, and alive to every trivial roughness while treading the prosperous paths of life, suddenly rising in mental force to be the comforter and supporter of her husband under misfortune, and abiding with unshrinking firmness the bitterest blast of adversity. ~ Washington Irving

I was thinking I had noticed a curious lack of either enthusiasm or bitterness in the account of the world by Theobald's sister. There was in her story the flatness one associates with a storyteller who is accepting of unhappy endings, as if her life and her companions had never been exotic to her - as if they had always been staging a ludicrous and doomed effort at reclassification. ~ John Irving

You don't want to dwell on your enemies, you know. I basically feel so superior to my critics for the simple reason that they haven't done what I do. Most book reviewers haven't written 11 novels. Many of them haven't written one. ~ John Irving

We never thought we were writing for posterity, because at the time everyone assumed that all the great standards had already been written by Irving Berlin, Cole Porter, Rodgers and Hammerstein ... The songs we were writing were supposed to be temporary things, of the period, like comic books. ~ Mike Stoller

Angling is an amusement peculiarly adapted to the mild and cultivated scenery of England ~ Washington Irving

If you talk about it, you probably won't write it ~ Irving Wallace

The memoir-novel dumbed down fiction and traduced ~ John Irving

No story ever looks as bad as the story you've just bought; no story ever looks as good as the story the other fellow just bought. ~ Irving Thalberg

But the real cause was, that the people, in electing their representatives to the grand council, were particular in choosing them for their talents at talking, without inquiring whether they possessed the more rare, difficult, and oft-times important talent of holding their tongues. The consequence was, that this deliberative body was composed of the most loquacious men in the community. As they considered themselves placed there to talk, every man concluded that his duty to his constituents, and, what is more, his popularity with them, required that he should harangue on every subject, whether he understood it or not. There was an ancient mode of burying a chieftain, by every soldier throwing his shield full of earth on the corpse, until a mighty mound was formed; so, whenever a question was brought forward in this assembly, every member pressing forward to throw on his quantum of wisdom, the subject was quickly buried under a mountain of words. ~ Washington Irving

To say that most of us today are purely expansive is only another way of saying that most of us continue to be more concerned with the quantity than with the quality of our democracy. ~ Irving Babbitt

I'm a worst-case scenario person. I'm only interested in a story because I kind of go, like a magnet, to the worst thing that can happen. ~ John Irving

I'm not writing non-fiction. I don't feel anything about me as a kid was unique. Except that I had more interest in being alone and using my imagination. ~ John Irving

Dan would entertain Owen and me by describing Mr. Tubulari's pentathlon, his "winterthon." "The first event," Dan Needham said, "is something wholesome, like splitting a cord of wood - points off, if you break your ax. Then you have to run ten miles in deep snow, or snowshoe for thirty. Then you chop a hole in the ice, and - carrying your ax - swim a mile under a frozen lake, chopping your way out at the opposite shore. Then you build an igloo - to get warm. Then comes the dogsledding. You have to mush a team of dogs - from Anchorage to Chicago. Then you build another igloo - to rest." "THAT'S SIX EVENTS," Owen said. "A PENTATHLON IS ONLY FIVE." "So forget the second igloo," Dan Needham said. "I WONDER WHAT MISTER TUBULARI DOES FOR NEW YEAR'S EVE," Owen said. "Carrot juice," Dan said, fixing himself another whiskey. "Mister Tubulari makes his own carrot juice. ~ John Irving

Within a year, possibly by next fall," he was saying, "something that has never before been done, will be done. NASA will be sending men to the moon. Think of that. Men who were once in classrooms like this one will leave their footprints on the lunar surface." He paused. I leaned in close against the wall so I could hear him. "That is why you are sitting here tonight, and why you will be coming here in the months ahead. You come to dream dreams. You come to build fantastic castles up in the air. And you come to learn how to build the foundations that make those castles real. When the men who will command that mission were boys your age, no one knew. But in a few months, that's what will happen. So, twenty years from now, what will people say of you? 'No one knew then that this kid Washington Irving High School would grow up to do' ... what? What castle will you build? ~ Gary D. Schmidt

My mother and I smoked a cigarette; she was trying to quit as I was trying to start. Therefore, we shared a cigarette between us- in fact, we'd promised never to smoke a whole one alone. ~ John Irving