Thomas Bailey Aldrich quotes

Thomas Bailey Aldrich was an American poet, novelist, and editor. His best-known works include the semi-autobiographical novel "The Story of a Bad Boy" and his lyric poetry. He played an influential role in American literary culture as editor of The Atlantic Monthly. Here are 55 of his quotes:

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

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down on the most desirable spot.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

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

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

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

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 so, would I?

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

If my best wines mislike thy taste, And my best service win thy frown, Then tarry not, I bid thee haste; There's many another Inn in town.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Somewhere-in desolate wind-swept space- In Twilight-land-in No-man's land- Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand. "And who are you?” cried one, agape, Shuddering in the gloaming light. "I know not,” said the second Shape, "I only died last night.”.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Here is woe, a self and not the mask of woe.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

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 venerable colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Wide open and unguarded stand our gates, Named of the four winds, North, South, East and West; Portals that lead to an enchanted land... Here, it is written, Toil shall have its wage And Honor honor, and the humblest man Stand level with the highest in the law. Of such a land have men in dungeons dreamed And with the vision brightening in their eyes Gone smiling to the fagot and the sword. 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

Aldrich, Thomas. "The Unguarded Gates." Literature for Composition. Ed. Sylvan Barnet, William Burto, William E. Cain. Boston: Perdue, 2014. 1113. Print.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich