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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
Make
Possession
Men
Creatures
Gentlest
Walks
Despot
Almost
Nero
Possible
Despots
Power
Unlimited
Human
Creature
Humans
Tyranny

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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.
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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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O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
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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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O Liberty, white Goddess! is it well to leave the gates unguarded? On thy breast fold Sorrow's children, soothe the hurts of Fate, lift the down-trodden, but with hand of steel stay those who to thy sacred portals come to waste the gifts of Freedom.
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The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is.
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Hebe's here, May is here! The air is fresh and sunny And the miser-bees are busy Hoarding golden honey.
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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.
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They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
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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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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.
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The ocean moans over dead men's bones.
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My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings
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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.
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With the tears a Land hath shed. Their graves should ever be green.
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The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.
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To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
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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.
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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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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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