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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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Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Age: 70 †
Born: 1836
Born: November 2
Died: 1907
Died: March 19
Editor
Journalist
Novelist
Poet
Writer
Portsmouth
New Hampshire
Somehow
Getting
Wrong
Ends
Power
Hourglass
Best
Sands
Life
Reverse
Sand
More quotes by Thomas Bailey Aldrich
To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent that is to triumph over old age.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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
Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
The ring of a false coin is not more recognizable than that of a rhyme setting forth a false sorrow.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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
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
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
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
But I, in the chilling twilight stand and wait At the portcullis, at thy castle gate, Longing to see the charmed door of dreams Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
Hebe's here, May is here! The air is fresh and sunny And the miser-bees are busy Hoarding golden honey.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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
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
It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
My mind lets go a thousand things, Like dates of wars and deaths of kings
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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
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
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
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
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
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