Life & Wisdom Quote by Washington Irving

A deliciously self-canceling idea sits at the center of Irving's line: fulfillment that feeds on its own absence. It flatters the artist's appetite while quietly denying the possibility of arrival. For a writer associated with genteel Romantic-era storytelling, the surprise is how modern the psychology feels. The quote reframes dissatisfaction not as a defect but as the engine of craft, turning the ache of "not yet" into a sustainable form of meaning.

The intent is partly consolatory and partly disciplinary. Irving is giving the working artist permission to feel perpetually behind without interpreting that sensation as failure. The subtext, though, is sharper: if you're "never as good as you'd like to be", you're also never allowed to stop. The hope he offers is contingent on an unfillable gap between the self who performs and the self who judges, a split that keeps the performer striving and, conveniently, producing.

Context matters. Irving wrote in a period when "genius" was being romanticized, but professional authorship and the market for culture were also solidifying. His formulation smuggles an ethic of labor into a romantic pose: the dream of transcendence is kept alive by the daily irritation of not measuring up. There's also a quiet warning against vanity. If fulfillment is defined as completion, art dies the moment you crown yourself finished. Irving's line protects the practice by refusing the crown, making hope less a mood than a method.