T. B. Aldrich Quotes

That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.

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

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

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.

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

The ability to have our own way, and at the same time convince others they are having their own way, is a rare thing among men. Among women it is as common as eyebrows.

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.

So I sit there kicked my heels, thinking about New Orleans, and watching a morbid blue-bottle fly attempt to commit suicide by butting his head against the windowpane.

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

The young girl in my story is to be as sensitive to praise as a prism is to light. Whenever anybody praises her she breaks into colors.

The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.

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

Up from the dark the moon begins to creep; and now a pallid, haggard face lifts she above the water-line: thus from the deep a drowned body rises solemnly.

At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as in the Middle Ages.

This one sits shivering in Fortune's smile, taking his joy with bated, doubtful breath. This other, gnawed by hunger, all the while laughs in the teeth of Death.

I shall not be lonely. No one who reads is ever that.

You could not stop the winds and you could not stop Time. It went on and on, -and on.

To keep the heart unwrinkled to be hopeful kindly cheerful reverent -that is to triumph over old age.

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

They fail and they alone who have not striven.

October turned my maple's leaves to gold The most are gone now here and there one lingers Soon these will slip from out the twig's weak hold Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

After a debauch of thundershower the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow.

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 spots.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age.

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.

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

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

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.