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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

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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
Generations
Orators
Voice
Spell
Become
Spells
Also
Shadows
Great
Following
Writers
Shadow
Indistinct
Speech
Vanishes

More quotes by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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What is a day to an immortal soul! A breath, no more.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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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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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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Black Tragedy lets slip her grim disguise and shows you laughing lips and roguish eyes but when, unmasked, gay Comedy appears, how wan her cheeks are, and what heavy tears!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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With the tears a Land hath shed. Their graves should ever be green.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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
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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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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We weep when we are born, Not when we die!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs -- putting in his oar, so to speak -- with some pat word or sentence.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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I beg you come tonight and dine A welcome waits you and sound wine The Roederer chilly to a charm As Juno's breasts the claret warm.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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Everyone has a bookplate these days, and the collectors are after it. The fool and his bookplate are soon parted. To distribute one's ex libris is inanely to destroy the only significance it has, that of indicating the past or present ownership of the volume in which it is placed.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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
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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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich