Thomas Bailey Aldrich quotes - page 2

The Unguarded Gates [1885]. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich)
Wide open and unguarded stand our gates. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Night is a stealthy, evil raven, wrapt to the eyes in his black wings. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Conservatism and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the unconventional its values also? View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Dwellers by the sea are generally superstitious; sailors always are. There is something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the imagination. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The ocean moans over dead men's bones. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
There is a special Providence that watches over idiots, drunken men, and boys. View quote
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 again. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise And shows you laughing lips and rougish eyes. But when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, 'Tis ten to one you find the girl in tears. View quote
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 him so stoutly in the struggle for independence. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich)
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung! View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
After a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow. View quote
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 souls have been blighted in the gloom of poverty the world will never know. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy. View quote
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 voice. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
It is only your habitual late riser who takes in the full flavor of Nature at those rare intervals when he gets up to go a-fishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky. (Thomas Bailey Aldrich)
The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a simulated sorrow. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The fanatic has the courage of his conviction and the intolerance of his courage. He is opposed to the death penalty for murder, but he would willingly have anyone electrocuted who disagreed with him on the subject. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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. View quote
Thomas Bailey Aldrich