Quote

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
Getting
Wrong
Ends
Power
Hourglass
Best
Sands
Life
Reverse
Sand
Somehow

More quotes by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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A glance, a word -- and joy or pain befalls.... How slight the links are in the chain that binds us to our destiny!
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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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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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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The ocean moans over dead men's bones.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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.
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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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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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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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
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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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Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.
Thomas Bailey Aldrich
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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
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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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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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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
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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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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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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