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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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Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Age: 70 †
Born: 1836
Born: November 2
Died: 1907
Died: March 19
Editor
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Portsmouth
New Hampshire
Almost
Nero
Possible
Despots
Power
Unlimited
Human
Creature
Humans
Tyranny
Make
Possession
Men
Creatures
Gentlest
Walks
Despot

More quotes by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.
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My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings
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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.
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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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It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.
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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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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.
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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.
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They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
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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.
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What is a day to an immortal soul! A breath, no more.
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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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The ocean moans over dead men's bones.
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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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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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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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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
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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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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.
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Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.
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