Thomas Bailey Aldrich Quotes

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.

What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do sowould I?

Those forms we fancy shadows, those strange lights That flash on dank morasses, the quick wind That smites us by the roadside—are the Night's Innumerable children. Unconfined By shroud or coffin, disembodied souls, Uneasy spirits, steal into the air From festering graveyards when the curfew tolls At the day's death... And wheresoever murders have been done, In stately palaces or lonesome woods, Where'er a soul has sold itself and lost Its high inheritance, there, hovering, broods Some sad, invisible, accurséd Ghost!

Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

I like not lady-slippers, Nor yet the sweet-pea blossoms, Nor yet the flaky roses, Red or white as snow; I like the chaliced lilies, The heavy Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow.

The fanatic has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject.

But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait At the portcullis, at thy castle gate, Longing to see the charmed door of dreams Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!

The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.

Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West; the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.

What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?

Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs -- putting in his oar, so to speak -- with some pat word or sentence.

I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings.

With the tears a Land hath shed. Their graves should ever be green.

The ocean moans over dead men's bones.

Hebe's here, May is here! The air is fresh and sunny; And the miser-bees are busy Hoarding golden honey.

When friends are at your hearthside met, Sweet courtesy has done its most If you have made each guest forget That he himself is not the host.

Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays.... The grim cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach blossoms.

Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offense he spoke the word he meant

Everyone has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it. The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's ex libris is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is placed.

O Liberty...! is it well To leave the gates unguarded?

Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!

We weep when we are born, Not when we die!

How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.

After a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow.

O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well to leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of Fate, lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel stay those who to thy sacred portals come to waste the gifts of Freedom.

The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is.

We knew it would rain, for the poplars showed The white of their leaves, the amber grain Shrunk in the wind,-and the lightning now Is tangled in tremulous skeins of rain.

Great thoughts in crude, unshapely verse set forth lose half their preciousness, and ever must, unless the diamond with its own rich dust be cut and polished, it seems little worth.

No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.

October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from the twigs' weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.

The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.

Sorrow itself is not so hard to bear As the thought of sorrow coming. Airy ghosts, That work no harm, do terrify us more Than men in steel with bloody purposes. Death is not dreadful; 'tis the dread of death— We die whene'er we think of it!

The walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome stride toward the longed-for millennium.

A glance, a word -- and joy or pain befalls.... How slight the links are in the chain that binds us to our destiny!

It were better to be a soldier's widow than a coward's wife.

It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). There's a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty. Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever - unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime.

The ability to have our own way, and at the same time convince others they are having their own way, is a rare thing among men. Among women it is as common as eyebrows.

Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!

I beg you come tonight and dine A welcome waits you and sound wine The Roederer chilly to a charm As Juno's breasts the claret warm.

This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of Death.

That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.