Aldrich Quotes & Sayings

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

the goal of schools shouldn't be to manufacture "productive citizens" to fill some corporate cubicle; it should be to inspire each child to find a "calling" that will change the world. — Clark Aldrich

And so they discussed it seriously, Abbie who knew that one may laugh with a child but at him, and Laura, who knew that Grandma was one unfailing source of sympathy and understanding in a world which was beginning to be critical. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Standing there in the soddie door, she seemed two personalities. One argued bitterly that it was impossible for love to keep going when there was no hope for the future, suggested that there was no use trying to keep it going. The other said sternly that marriage was not the fulfillment of a passion, - marriage was the fulfillment of love. And love was sometimes pleasure and sometimes duty. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

That was the trouble of being old. Your body no longer obeyed you. It did unruly and unreasonable things. An eye suddenly might not see for a moment. Your knees gave out at the wrong time, so that when you thought you were walking north, you might find yourself going a little northwest. Your brain, too, had that same flighty trick. You might be speaking of something and forget it temporarily, - your mind going off at a little to the northwest, too, so to speak. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

My little scam in April '85 went like this: Give me $50,000; here's some names of some people we've recruited. — Aldrich Ames

Deciding whether to trust or credit a person is always an uncertain task. — Aldrich Ames

As she wrote her pulse quickened to the pleasure of forming the phrases,--her blood warmed to the joy of the working. She was experiencing a return of the familiar sensation of happiness in constructing. Quite suddenly, in fancy she caught in the far distance a glimpse of silver wings. It gave her a warm thrill of gratification too deep for words. Immediately she knew through some inner consciousness, that no matter what the future would hold--joy or sorrow, happiness or grief--that no matter where life's paths would lead her--through sharp and stony ways or beside still waters--buried deep within her was an indestructible capacity to visualize a white bird flying. She might never get close to the way of its winging, but always there would be joy in lifting her eyes to the glory of its distant flight. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

...Mabel put on the boiled potatos, unmashed, the stewed tomatos, some inferior dried beef, and some bread that plainly said, 'Darling, I am growing old'. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It were better to be a soldier's widow than a coward's wife. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Let's say a Soviet exchange student back in the '70s would go back and tell the KGB about people and places and things that he'd seen and done and been involved with. This is not really espionage; there's no betrayal of trust. — Aldrich Ames

It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go afishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

My mind lets go a thousand things,
Like dates of wars and deaths of kings — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The resistance of policy-makers to intelligence is not just founded on an ideological presupposition. They distrust intelligence sources and intelligence officials because they don't understand what the real problems are. — Aldrich Ames

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Have you ever noticed how many men in the Bible failed in the second half of life? Our enemy is so cunning that he will wait forty or even fifty years to set a trap. — Joseph C. Aldrich

I found that our Soviet espionage efforts had virtually never, or had very seldom, produced any worthwhile political or economic intelligence on the Soviet Union. — Aldrich Ames

Nothing except time is wasted in Italy. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

You have, to dream things out. It keeps a kind of an ideal before you. You see it first in your mind and then you set about to try and make it like the ideal. If you want a garden, - why, I guess you've got to dream a garden. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

To the extent that I considered the personal burden of harming the people who had trusted me, plus the Agency, or the United States, I wasn't processing that. — Aldrich Ames

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

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It must be the aim of education to teach the citizen that he must first of all rule himself. — Winthrop W. Aldrich

A girl does not treat a possible lover with unvarying simplicity and directness. In all its phases, love is complex; friendship is not. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Junior was eleven. The statement is significant. There are a few peevish people in the world who believe that all eleven-year-old boys ought to be hung. Others, less irritable, think that gently chloroforming them would seem more humane. A great many good-natured folks contend that incarceration for a couple of years would prove the best way to dispose of them. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Mrs. Schneiderman's theory of life was that earth held no sorrow that food could not heal ... — Bess Streeter Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

I've tried to keep pleasant," Mabel went on. "You don't know how I've tried. I have that verse pinned up on my dresser, about
The man worth while is the man who can smile,
When everything goes dead wrong."
"Take it down," Mother said cheerfully. "If there's a verse in the world that has been worked overtime, it's that one. I can't think of anything more inane than to smile when everything goes dead wrong, unless it is to cry when everything is passably right. That verse always seemed to me to be a surface sort of affair. Take it down and substitute 'I will lift up mine eyes unto the hills from whence cometh my help.' That goes to the heart of things
when you feel that strength, then the dead-wrong things begin to miraculously right themselves. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Except for our higher order of minds we are like the little moles under the earth carrying out blindly the work of digging, thinking our own dark passage-ways constitute all there is to the world. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

For though love has been ridiculed and disgraced, exchanged and bartered, dragged through the courts, and sold for thirty pieces of silver, the bright, steady glow of its fire still shines on the hearth-stones of countless homes ... — Bess Streeter Aldrich

The Aldrich Plan is the Wall Street Plan. It means another panic, if necessary, to intimidate the people. Aldrich, paid by the government to represent the people, proposes a plan for the trusts instead. — Charles August Lindbergh

It is a great mistake on the part of elderly ladies, male and female, to tell a child that he is seeing his happiest days. Do not you believe a word of it, my little friend. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

And now Abbie had the new experience of attempting to keep another person courageous. It was more trying than to keep up her own spirits. Why must she always be strong for other people? — Bess Streeter Aldrich

The wheels where enormous wooden affairs, the back ones rounding up over the windows of the coach. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise and shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes; but when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, how wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

We weep when we are born, not when we die! — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

You know, Grace, it's queer but I don't feel narrow. I feel broad. How can I explain it to you, so you would understand? I've seen everything ... and I've hardly been away from this yard ...
I've been part of the beginning and part of the growth. I've married ... and borne children and looked into the face of death. Is childbirth narrow, Grace? Or marriage? Or death? When you've experienced all those things, Grace, the spirit has traveled although the body has been confined. I think travel is a rare privilege and I'm glad you can have it. But not every one who stays at home is narrow and not every one who travels is broad. I think if you can understand humanity ... can sympathize with every creature ... can put yourself into the personality of every one ... you're not narrow ... you're broad. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The crisis prompted the issue of emergency paper money: in Britain, £1 and 10s Treasury notes; in the United States, the emergency currency that banks were authorized to issue under the Aldrich-Vreeland Act of 1908.46 Then, as now, the authorities reacted to a liquidity crisis by printing money. — Niall Ferguson

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

Biggest affirmative argument I know in favor of 'If a man die, shall he live again?' is just the way you feel inside you that nothin' can stop you from livin' on. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

I said in court a long time ago that I didn't see that the Soviet Union was significantly helped by the information I gave them, nor that the United States was significantly harmed. — Aldrich Ames

I knew I was born at the North but hoped nobody would find it out. I looked upon the misfortune as something so shrouded by time and distance that maybe nobody remembered it. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

...The last name had been entered by Samuel Peters' agile pen with much shading of downward strokes and many extra corkscrew appendages... — Bess Streeter Aldrich

[On art:] I believe that it not only enriches the spiritual life, but that it makes one more sane and sympathetic, more observant and understanding, regardless of whatever age it springs from, whatever subjects it represents. — Abby Aldrich Rockefeller

The wind was blowing from the east and the cedars bent before it, - blowing from the east like the breath of the war god. And Fred and Stanley were waving their hats gayly back to her, while the cedars bent and the wind blew from the east. They were like her own boys marching off to war. Children of her children, she loved them as she had loved their parents. Did a woman never get over loving? Deep love brought relatively deep heartaches. Why could not a woman of her age, whose family was raised, relinquish the hold upon her emotions? Why could she not have a peaceful old age, wherein there entered neither great affection nor its comrade, great sorrow? She had seen old women who seemed not to care as she was caring, whose emotions seemed to have died with their youth. Could she not be one of them? For a long time she stood in the window and looked at the cedars twisting before the east wind, like so many helpless women under the call from the east. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

The human spy, in terms of the American espionage effort, had never been terribly pertinent. — Aldrich Ames

Conservatism and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the unconventional its values also? — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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 ... — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

To the mass of mankind - meaning also womankind - marriage may be the only possible thing; but to the individual, it may be the one thing impossible. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

If you chance to live in a town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty of the streets of Portsmouth. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Slavery in New Hampshire was never legally abolished, unless Abraham Lincoln did it. The State itself has not ever pronounced any emancipation edict. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It was queer how it all hurt you--how the odor of the night, the silver sheen of the moon, the moist feeling of the dew, the whispering of the night breeze, how somewhere down in your throat it hurt you. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

An espionage organization is a collector: it collects raw information. That gets processed by a machinery that is supposed to resolve its reliability, and to present a finished product. — Aldrich Ames

Aunt Grace was leaving ... Looking after her a moment, Laura had another feeling of tenderness toward her. How we live our lives side by side with those whom we never know or understand. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

He [Sam] wrote it with great flourishes, his hand making many dizzy elliptical journeys before it settled down to make a elaborate 'E' with a curving tail as long as some prehistoric baboons. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It took all their common sense and philosophy to face life these days. The two are synonymous. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Impression minus expression leads to spiritual depression. — Joseph C. Aldrich

Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The national security state has many unfair and cruel weapons in its arsenal, but that of junk science is one which can be fought and perhaps defeated. — Aldrich Ames

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

...For can you think how it would be, to never, never hear a meadow lark sing again...? — Bess Streeter Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Her suffering ended with the day, Yet lived she at its close, And breathed the long, long night away In statue-like repose. — James Aldrich

I meant to write a song of battle, for storied deeds of war inspire; I seemed to hear the cannon thunder, I seemed to see the smoke and fire. But oh, the pathos of the ending when brave men conquered in the fight, knelt, kissing yielded blood-stained colors!
my eyes are blurred, I cannot write. — Anne Reeve Aldrich

Our souls may all be equal in the sight of the Lord, but our gumption and ingenuity ain't. So the results of man's labor will never be equal. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The burdens of childhood are as hard to bear as the crosses that weigh us down later in life, while the happinesses of childhood are tame compared with those of our maturer years. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Some girls are apparently born with dates; some through much personal activity, achieve them; but others seem by necessity to have dates thrust upon them. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

Love is the light that you see by. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

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. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

There ought to be a home for children to come to, - and their children, - a central place, to which they could always bring their joys and sorrows, - an old familiar place for them to return to on Sundays and Christmases. An old home ought always to stand like a mother with open arms. It ought to be here waiting for the children to come to it, - like homing pigeons. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

The thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the sincere thing. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it. What noble enterprises have been checked and what fine souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

I shall not be lonely. No one who reads is ever that. — Mildred Aldrich

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? — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Katherine it was who took upon herself the complete charge of [Junior's] speech. Not an insignificant "have went" nor an infinitesimal "I seen" ever escaped the keen ears of his eldest sister, who immediately corrected him. Mother sometimes thought Katherine a little severe when, in the interest of proper speaking, she would stop him in the midst of an exciting account of a home-run. There were times, thought Mother, when the spirit of the thing was so much more important than the flesh in which it was clothed. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

All's well with thee if thou art in just hands. — Anne Reeve Aldrich

A person may encircle the globe with mind open only to bodily comfort. Another may live his life on a sixty-foot lot and listen to the voices of the universe. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

When Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789, he was not much impressed by the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in the struggle for independence. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Thoughts are acrobats, agile and quite often untrustworthy. — Bess Streeter Aldrich

What is a day to an immortal soul!
A breath, no more. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offense he spoke the word he meant — Thomas Bailey Aldrich

To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man. — Thomas Bailey Aldrich