Who can tell, when he sets forth to wander, whither he may be driven by the unscertain currents of existence, or when he may return, or whether it ma… - Washington Irving

There are certain half-dreaming moods of mind, in which we naturally steal away from noise and glare, and seek some quiet haunt, where we may indulge our reveries and build our air castles undisturbed. — Washington Irving, “The Mutability of Literature,

Whenever a man's friends begin to compliment him about looking young, he may be sure that they think he is growing old. I

The foregoing circumstances, physical and moral, may give an idea of the causes which maintained the Arabs for ages in an unchanged condition. While their isolated position and their vast deserts protected them from conquest, their internal feuds, and their want of a common tie, political or religious, kept them from being formidable as conquerors. They were a vast aggregation of distinct parts ; full of individual vigor, but wanting coherent strength. Although their nomadic life rendered them hardy and active ; although the greater part of them were warriors from their infancy, yet their arms were only wielded against each other, excepting some of the frontier tribes, which occasionally engaged as mercenaries in external wars. While, therefore, the other nomadic races of Central Asia, possessing no greater
aptness for warfare, had, during a course of ages, successively overrun and conquered the civilized world, this warrior race, unconscious of its power, remained disjointed and harmless in the depths of its native deserts. The time at length arrived when its discordant tribes were to be united in one creed, and animated by one common cause ; when a mighty genius was to arise, who should bring together these scattered limbs, animate them with his own enthusiastic and daring spirit, and lead them forth, a giant of the desert, to shake and overturn the empires of the earth.