Life's Pleasures Quote by Washington Irving

Irving is selling conviviality as a kind of social technology: not the flashy kind that depends on a star performer, but the steady, democratic kind that keeps a room from grinding into status games. The phrase "oil and wine" is doing double duty. Oil is practical, a lubricant for friction; wine is celebratory, a mild intoxication that loosens the self. Together they suggest that "honest good humor" is both utility and pleasure, the thing that makes conversation move and makes people want to stay.

The subtext is a quiet rebuke of wit-as-domination. Irving lived in a world where conversation could be a contest and cleverness a weapon, especially in salons and dining rooms where social rank mattered. By praising "jokes... rather small", he’s not advocating dullness; he’s endorsing low-stakes humor that signals safety. Small jokes are less likely to humiliate, less likely to draw blood, more likely to invite participation. Abundant laughter becomes the metric of success because it measures inclusion, not brilliance.

"Honest" is the hinge word. It implies an opposite: performative geniality, the chuckle used to curry favor, the joke that flatters the teller. Irving’s ideal merriment is unforced and non-transactional, a mood that dissolves pretense without needing a target. In the early American literary moment he helped shape, that’s also a cultural wish: a sociability that feels native and roomy, not imported aristocratic sparkle. The best gathering, he argues, isn’t the one with the sharpest lines; it’s the one where nobody is keeping score.