“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.”
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.
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Thomas Bailey Aldrich 19
American poet, novelist, editor 1836–1907Related quotes

The Confession (c. 452?)
Context: In a vision of the night, I saw a man whose name was Victoricus coming as it from Ireland with innumerable letters, and he gave me one of them, and I read the beginning of the letter: "The Voice of the Irish", and as I was reading the beginning of the letter I seemed at that moment to hear the voice of those who were beside the forest of Foclut which is near the western sea, and the were crying as if with one voice: "'We beg you, holy youth, that you shall come and shall walk again among us." And I was stung intensely in my heart so that I could read no more, and thus I awoke. Thanks be to God, because after so many ears the Lord bestowed on them according to their cry.

1960s, (1963)

Letter to Lord Russell of Liverpool, February 18, 1959
1950s

“If I knew words enough, I could write the longest love letter in the world and never get tired”
Source: The Best Early Stories of F. Scott Fitzgerald

As quoted in Forbes (April 1948), p. 42
Variant: The habit of reading is the only one I know in which there is no alloy. It lasts when all other pleasures fade. It will be there to support you when all other resources are gone. . . . It will make your hours pleasant to you as long as you live.

Letter to Mr C. L. Aiken, March 19, 1930
1930s

And I want to say tonight, I want to say that I am happy that I didn't sneeze.
1960s, I've Been to the Mountaintop (1968)