Thomas Bailey Aldrich Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• 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

  Book, Men, Rights

  THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH (1903). “PONKAPOG PAPERS”

  6 Copy quote

• Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Voice, Shadow, Generations

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Ponkapog papers. A sea turn, and other matters”

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Fall, Men, Eden

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1897). “The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich”

  6 Copy quote

• 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

  Book, Age, Half

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1903). “Ponkapog papers, A sea turn, and other papers”

  24 Copy quote

• Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Communication, Dialect, Care

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “Ponkapog papers: A sea turn, and other papers”

  4 Copy quote

• Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, and through them presses a wild motley throng, men from the Volga and the Tartar steppes, featureless figures of the Hoang-Ho, Malayan, Scythian, Teuton, Kelt, and Slav. Flying the Old World's poverty and scorn, these bringing with them unknown gods and rites, Ttose, tiger passions, here to stretch their claws in street and alley. What strange tongues are loud accents of menace alien to our air, voices that once the Tower of Babel knew! O Liberty, white Goddess! Is it well to leave the gates unguarded?

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Passion, Men, Voice

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich, “Unguarded Gates”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Men, Soul, Gold

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “Ponkapog papers: A sea turn, and other papers”

  4 Copy quote

• Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Writing, Reputation, Discrepancies

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Ponkapog papers. A sea turn, and other matters”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Girl, Light, Color

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1903). “The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Ponkapog papers, A sea turn, and other papers”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Cutting, Dust, Half

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “Poems”

  7 Copy quote

• 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

  Pain, Destiny, Chains That Bind

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1911). “The writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich”

  5 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Forever, Speak, Affair

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Ponkapog papers. A sea turn, and other matters”

  8 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Military, Wife, Soldier

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1911). “The writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich”

  5 Copy quote

• 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

  Beautiful, Uplifting, Memorial Day

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1903). “Ponkapog Papers”

  7 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Life, Giving

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1911). “The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Poems”

  4 Copy quote

• Day is a snow-white Dove of heaven That from the East glad message brings. Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapped to the eyes in his black wings.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Eye, Night, Wings

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1897). “The Writings of Thomas Bailey Aldrich”

  4 Copy quote

• So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Life, Age, Coins

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Poems”

  4 Copy quote

• The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it.

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Men, Gold, Possession

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “Ponkapog papers: A sea turn, and other papers”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Sand, Ends, All The Best

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1970). “The Works of Thomas Bailey Aldrich: Ponkapog papers. A sea turn, and other matters”

  26 Copy quote

• 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

  Summer, Spring, Fall

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1873). “Marjorie Daw and Other People”, p.168

  58 Copy quote

• 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

  Past, Fool, Ownership

  7 Copy quote

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

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Hypocrisy, Sorrow, Coins

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich (1907). “Ponkapog papers: A sea turn, and other papers”

  5 Copy quote

• 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!

  Thomas Bailey Aldrich

  Children, Night, Light

  Thomas Bailey ALDRICH (1859). “The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems”, p.113

  27 Copy quote

• 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

  Wine, Waiting, Sound

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Rain, Wind, Rivers

  Thomas Bailey ALDRICH (1859). “The Ballad of Babie Bell, and Other Poems”, p.24

  8 Copy quote

Page 2 of 3

First

← Prev

1

2

3

Next →

• facebook
• twitter
• googleplus
• email
• linkedin