Thomas Bailey Aldrich

What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of Kings

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— 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

I beg you come tonight and dine A welcome waits you and sound wine The Roederer chilly to a charm As Juno's…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“Then the ship gave sudden lurches that made it a matter of uncertainty whether one was going to put his fork in…

— 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…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Every man has within himself a gold mine whose riches are limited only by his own industry.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

My father invested his money so securely in the banking business that he was never able to get any of it out…

— 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…

— 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…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led - with what silken…

— 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…

— 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;…

— 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…

— 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…

— 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…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— 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…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A man may do worse than make what the world calls a not wholly happy marriage.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“..Fell over the prostrate steersman, and there we all lay in a heep, two or three of us quite picturesque with the…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

A man should have duties outside of himself; without them, he is a mere balloon, inflated with thin egotism and drifting nowhere.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Day is a snow-white Dove of heaven That from the East glad message brings. Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapped to…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

There must be such a thing as a child with average ability, but you can't find a parent who will admit that…

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich