Quote

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

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Age: 70 †
Born: 1836
Born: November 2
Died: 1907
Died: March 19
Editor
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Portsmouth
New Hampshire
Speech
Vanishes
Generations
Orators
Voice
Spell
Become
Spells
Also
Shadows
Great
Following
Writers
Shadow
Indistinct

More quotes by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Image
The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
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 afishing. He brings virginal emotions and unsatiated eyes to the sparkling freshness of earth and stream and sky.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
What is a day to an immortal soul! A breath, no more.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
A glance, a word -- and joy or pain befalls.... How slight the links are in the chain that binds us to our destiny!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
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!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
The thing one reads and likes, and then forgets, is of no account. The thing that stays, and haunts one, and refuses to be forgotten, that is the sincere thing.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
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
Image
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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
With the tears a Land hath shed. Their graves should ever be green.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
Hebe's here, May is here! The air is fresh and sunny And the miser-bees are busy Hoarding golden honey.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
I like not lady-slippers, Nor yet the sweet-pea blossoms, Nor yet the flaky roses, Red or white as snow I like the chaliced lilies, The heavy Eastern lilies, The gorgeous tiger-lilies, That in our garden grow.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Image
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