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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.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Age: 70 †
Born: 1836
Born: November 2
Died: 1907
Died: March 19
Editor
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Portsmouth
New Hampshire
Military
Memorial
Cannons
Beautiful
Palms
Peaches
Shells
Blossoms
Uplifting
Decoration
Holiday
Holidays
Branches
Palm
Shrapnel
Turned
Grim
Peach
National
Shell
Cannon

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What is a day to an immortal soul! A breath, no more.
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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 sowould I?
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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.
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That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.
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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.
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But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait At the portcullis, at thy castle gate, Longing to see the charmed door of dreams Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
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We weep when we are born, Not when we die!
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Imagine all human beings swept off the face of the earth, excepting one man. Imagine this man in some vast city, New York or London. Imagine him on the third or fourth day of his solitude sitting in a house and hearing a ring at the door-bell!
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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.
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October turned my maple's leaves to gold The most are gone now here and there one lingers: Soon these will slip from the twigs' weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.
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My father invested his money so securely in the banking business that he was never able to get any of it out again.
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Gracious to all, to none subservient, Without offense he spoke the word he meant
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A glance, a word -- and joy or pain befalls.... How slight the links are in the chain that binds us to our destiny!
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Come watch with me the shaft of fire that glows in yonder West the fair, frail palaces, The fading Alps and archipelagoes and great cloud continents of sunset-seas.
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They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
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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.
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The ocean moans over dead men's bones.
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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.
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Books that have become classics - books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal - always remind me of retired colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, find themselves retired on half pay.
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