Thomas Bailey Aldrich Quotes (19 quotes)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich: 19 quotes0 likes

Famous Thomas Bailey Aldrich Quotes

“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

Miss Mehitabel's Son; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Broken Music; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).
Variant: So precious life is! Even to the old the hours are as a miser’s coins!

“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

Quits; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 379.

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Andromeda; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“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

Unguarded Gates; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“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

Shaw. Memorial Ode; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

Thomas Bailey Aldrich Quotes

“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

Identity; reported in Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed. (1919).

“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

Leaves From a Notebook, Ponkapog Papers (1903) p. 29.

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“The Unguarded Gates [1885]”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“Or light or dark, or short or tall,
She sets a springe to snare them all:
All's one to her—above her fan
She'd make sweet eyes at Caliban.”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Quatrains, Coquette; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 139.

“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

Source: Hospitality; reported in Hoyt's New Cyclopedia Of Practical Quotations (1922), p. 379.

“Wide open and unguarded stand our gates”

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

letter to Professor E.S. Morse http://books.google.com/books?id=fYQCAAAAYAAJ&pg=PA41&lpg=PA41&dq=There's+a+singular+and+a+perpetual+charm+in+a+letter+of+yours&source=bl&ots=DDWCA6FHyJ&sig=MyOOelB_Q2Fmd4jNObeyuptofsc&hl=en&ei=CYKiSvfaNof8MbOq3N0P&sa=X&oi=book_result&ct=result&resnum=1#v=onepage&q=%22There's%20a%20singular%20and%20a%20perpetual%20charm%20in%20a%20letter%20of%20yours%22&f=false, circa 1889.

“We weep when we are born, not when we die!”

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Source: "The Metempsychosis", The Poems of Thomas Bailey Aldrich (Boston: Houghton, Mifflin and Company, 1882), p. 139

“Night is a stealthy, evil raven, wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.”

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 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

Source: "A Shadow of the Night", p. 26 note: Unguarded Gates and Other Poems (1895)

“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