Thomas B. Aldrich Quotes & Sayings

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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