THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH QUOTES
American poet and novelist (1836-1907)
At the beginning of the twentieth century barbarism can throw off its gentle disguise, and burn a man at the stake as complacently as in the Middle Ages.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
Or light or dark, or short or tall, she sets a spring to snare them all; all's one to her--above her fan, she'd make sweet eyes at Caliban.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Coquette"
It was pleasant to me to get a letter from you the other day. Perhaps I should have found it pleasanter if I had been able to decipher it. I don't think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at).
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
letter to Professor E. S. Morse, c. 1889
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
Ponkapog Papers
Upon the cunning loom of thought
We weave our fancies, so and so.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Cloth of Gold
Though I be shut in darkness, and become insentient dust blown idly here and there, I count oblivion a scant price to pay for having once had held against my lip life's brimming cup of hydromel and rue--for having once known woman's holy love and a child's kiss, and for a little space been boon companion to the Day and Night, Fed on the odors of the summer dawn, and folded in the beauty of the stars. Dear Lord, though I be changed to senseless clay, and serve the potter as he turns his wheel, I thank Thee for the gracious gift of tears!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, wrapped to the eyes in his black wings.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Day and Night"
Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
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
Ponkapog Papers
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
Ponkapog Papers
Since Eden's freshness and man's fall, no rose has been original.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Originality"
I like to have a thing suggested rather than told in full. When every detail is given, the mind rests satisfied, and the imagination loses the desire to use its own wings. The partly draped statue has a charm which the nude lacks. Who would have those marble folds slip from the raised knee of the Venus of Melos?
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
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
"Kismet"
The walking delegates of a higher civilization, who have nothing to divide, look upon the notion of property as a purely artificial creation of human society. According to these advanced philosophers, the time will come when no man shall be allowed to call anything his. The beneficent law which takes away an author's rights in his own books just at the period when old age is creeping upon him seems to me a handsome stride toward the longed-for millennium.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
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
"Pessimist and Optimist"
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
"Moonrise at Sea"
O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness, star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"A Shadow of the Night"
Great thoughts in crude, unshapely verse set forth lose half their preciousness, and ever must, unless the diamond with its own rich dust be cut and polished, it seems little worth.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"On Reading---"