“How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privilege of the heroes of yore, who, whenever their origin was involved in obscurity, modestly announced themselves descended from a god.”

— Washington Irving

Book II, ch. 3.
Knickerbocker's History of New York http://www.gutenberg.org/etext/13042 (1809)

Adopted from Wikiquote. Last update June 3, 2021. History

Help us to complete the source, original and additional information

Do you have more details about the quote "How convenient it would be to many of our great men and great families of doubtful origin, could they have the privileg…" by Washington Irving?

Washington Irving photo

Washington Irving 46

writer, historian and diplomat from the United States 1783–1859

Related quotes

“Great men are always of a nature originally melancholy.”

Aristotle (-384–-321 BC) Classical Greek philosopher, student of Plato and founder of Western philosophy

“All things are from God; and above all, reason and imagination and the great gifts of the mind. They are good in themselves; and we must not altogether forget their origin even in their perversion.”

G. K. Chesterton (1874–1936) English mystery novelist and Christian apologist

The Dagger with Wings (1926)

“Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins.”

Camille Paglia (1947) American writer

Source: Sexual Personae: Art and Decadence from Nefertiti to Emily Dickinson (1990), p. 40
Context: The book of Genesis is a male declaration of independence from the ancient mother-cults. Its challenge to nature, so sexist to modern ears, marks one of the crucial moments in western history. Mind can never be free of matter. Only by mind imagining itself free can culture advance. The mother-cults, by reconciling man to nature, entrapped him in matter. Everything great in western civilization has come from struggling against our origins. Genesis is rigid and unjust, but it gave man hope as a man. It remade the world by male dynasty, canceling the power of mothers.

“From Thee, great God: we spring, to Thee we tend,
Path, motive, guide, original, and end.”

Samuel Johnson (1709–1784) English writer

Reported in Josiah Hotchkiss Gilbert, Dictionary of Burning Words of Brilliant Writers (1895), p. 257

“Every great and original writer, in proportion as he is great and original, must himself create the taste by which he is to be relished.”

William Wordsworth (1770–1850) English Romantic poet

Letter to Lady Beaumont (May 21, 1807).

“Love's great (and sole) originality is to make happiness indistinct from misery.”

Emil M. Cioran (1911–1995) Romanian philosopher and essayist

Anathemas and Admirations (1987)

“I will remark again, however, as a fact not unimportant to be understood, that the different sphere constitutes the grand origin of such distinction; that the Hero can be Poet, Prophet, King, Priest or what you will, according to the kind of world he finds himself born into. I confess, I have no notion of a truly great man that could not be all sorts of men.”

Thomas Carlyle (1795–1881) Scottish philosopher, satirical writer, essayist, historian and teacher

1840s, Heroes and Hero-Worship (1840), The Hero as Prophet

“The circumstance which gives authors an advantage above all these great masters, is this, that they can multiply their originals; or rather, can make copies of their works, to what number they please, which shall be as valuable as the originals themselves.”

Joseph Addison (1672–1719) politician, writer and playwright

No. 166 (10 September 1711).
The Spectator (1711–1714)

“Whatever the practical origins of aesthetic discernment may have been, it has been used to create great works of art. When the very loftiest human creations are seen to derive from humble origins and functions, what needs revision is not our esteem for these creations but our notion of nobility.”

Robert Nozick book The Nature of Rationality

The Nature of Rationality (1993), Ch. V : Instrumental Rationality and Its Limits; Rationality's Imagination, p. 181

“Great Iraqi men and women, members of the families of the martyrs, You have offered the homeland the best thing you could afford. Thus you have come to merit love and gratitude from all Iraqis and from its plains, mountains, skies and waters. You are good sons of this country. You have offered to the country great men who have averted harm from the country and paved its way to glory and greatness.”

Saddam Hussein (1937–2006) Iraqi politician and President

President Saddam Hussein's Speech on National Day (1981)

Related topics