Quote

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

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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
Firsts
Originals
First
Original
Men
Notes
Uttered
Rose
Freshness
Bird
Eden
Since
Originality
Fall
Note
Ever
Throat

More quotes by 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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How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.
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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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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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
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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
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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.
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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What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.
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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O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
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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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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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.
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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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.
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.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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?
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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.
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