Life & Wisdom Quote by Washington Irving

Real dignity, Irving insists, is not a porcelain heirloom to be kept behind glass. It is muscle: “healthful hardiness” suggests something trained in the open air, strengthened by use, not threatened by friction. That’s the gambit of the line: it flatters the reader’s ideal self-image while quietly rebuking the kind of “dignity” that is really just status anxiety wearing a waistcoat.

The key verb is “dreads.” Irving isn’t describing mere discomfort; he’s targeting fear - the fear that social proximity is contamination. By pairing “contact” with “communion,” he makes the point both physical and moral. This isn’t only about shaking hands with working people; it’s about recognizing shared humanity as a practice, almost a civic sacrament. A dignified person doesn’t condescend, and doesn’t need distance to feel secure.

Irving wrote in an America still inventing its social rules, where republican ideals collided with inherited class habits from Europe. As a writer who moved between Old World manners and New World self-making, he had reason to distrust the brittle respectability that polices boundaries while pretending to be refinement. The subtext lands as a critique of elitism that hides behind etiquette: if your “dignity” requires insulation from the “humble,” it isn’t dignity at all; it’s fragility.

What makes the line work is its calm confidence. No sermon, no thunder. Just a clean redefinition that turns snobbery into a tell: real dignity doesn’t flinch.