Washington Irving Quotes

“On mounting a rising ground, which brought the figure of his fellow-traveller in relief against the sky, gigantic in height, 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!”

“What's a Dullahan?''He's a headless horseman, in the service of the banshee.''Headless?''Yes.''Seriously?''Yes.''So he has no head?''That's usually what headless means.''No head at all?''You're really getting hung up on this headless thing, aren't you?''It's just kind of silly, even for us.''Yet you spend your days with a living skeleton.''But at least he has a head.''True.''He even has a spare.”

“But you would think, wouldn't you, that getting hit forty-five times in the neck with a blunt axe would qualify you to join the Headless Hunt? - Sir Nicholas de Mimsy”

“There's nothing like a headless corpse to bring a touch of excitement into one's life.”

“Man as an individual is a genius. But men in the mass form the headless monster, a great, brutish idiot that goes where prodded.”

“Words do not always need a destination.We can leave them behind us at the borders of feelings.Running around headless in the vague zone.And that is the privilege of artists: to live in confusion.”

“This ferry was taken over by the Yumas and operated for them by a man named Callaghan, but within days it was burned and Callaghan's headless body floated anonymously downriver, a vulture standing between the shoulderblades in clerical black, silent rider to the sea.”

“She needs you, Dad," Julia says. "She has unfinished business in this world.""What is the matter with you?" Charlie asks his daughter. "Any sane person would have told me to go to the doctor. I'm seeing a headless apparition every day. Maybe my medications are conflicting. You should see the list of side effects on this stuff.”

“While I told myself that each win was a small deposit on the ultimate ownership of the world welterweight crown, the enormous need in me to win touched a whole heap of other responses a fourteen years old can't really work out. It had something to do with rejecting the Lord, with my mother, the Judge, being surrounded by guys who came from wealthy homes, even my headless snake. While I didn't think of it as camouflage, I now know that it was, that I kept myself protected by being out in front. Too far in front to be an easy mark.”

“Mary Queen of Scots had a little dog, a Skye terrier, that was devoted to her. Moments after Mary was beheaded, the people who were watching saw her skirts moving about and they thought her headless body was trying to get itself to its feet. But the movement turned out to be her dog, which she had carried to the block with her, hidden in her skirts. Mary Stuart is supposed to have faced her execution with grace and courage (she wore a scarlet chemise to suggest she was being martyred), but I don’t think she could have been so brave if she had not secretly been holding tight to her Skye terrier, feeling his warm, silky fur against her trembling skin.”