American poet and novelist (1836-1907)
They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Enamored Architect of Airy Rhyme"
Day is a snow-white Dove of heaven that from the East glad message brings.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Day and Night"
We visit ... a neighboring grave-yard. I am by this time in a condition of mind to become a willing inmate of the place.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
The Story of a Bad Boy
Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs -- putting in his oar, so to speak -- with some pat word or sentence.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
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
"Unguarded Gates"
How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Two Moods"
What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit,
What life, what glorious eagerness it is,
Then mark how full Possession falls from this,
How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Pursuit and Possession"
No man has ever yet succeeded in painting an honest portrait of himself in an autobiography, however sedulously he may have set to work about it. In spite of his candid purpose he omits necessary touches and adds superfluous ones. At times he cannot help draping his thought, and the least shred of drapery becomes a disguise. It is only the diarist who accomplishes the feat of self-portraiture, and he, without any such end in view, does it unconsciously. A man cannot keep a daily record of his comings and goings and the little items that make up the sum of his life, and not inadvertently betray himself at every turn. He lays bare his heart with a candor not possible to the self-consciousness that inevitably colors premeditated revelation.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
So precious life is! Even to the old, the hours are as a miser's coins!
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Broken Music"
The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
The laurels of an orator who is not a master of literary art wither quickly.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
I hope he and she that was Miss Wang Wang are very happy together, sitting cross-legged over diminutive cups of tea in a sky-blue tower hung with bells.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
The Story of a Bad Boy
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.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Hospitality"
Then the ship gave sudden lurches that made it a matter of uncertainty whether one was going to put his fork in his mouth or into his eye.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
The Story of a Bad Boy
What is more cheerful, now, in the fall of the year, than an open-wood-fire? Do you hear those little chirps and twitters coming out of that piece of apple-wood? Those are the ghosts of the robins and blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Miss Mehetabel's Son", The Atlantic Monthly, Jun. 1873
These Winter nights against my window-pane
Nature with busy pencil draws designs
Of ferns and blossoms and fine spray of pines,
Oak-leaf and acorn and fantastic vines,
Which she will make when summer comes again--
Quaint arabesques in argent, flat and cold,
Like curious Chinese etchings.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Frost-Work"
A man is known by the company his mind keeps.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
Ponkapog Papers
That was indeed to live -- at one bold swoop to wrest from darkling death the best that death to life can give.
THOMAS BAILEY ALDRICH
"Shaw Memorial Ode"
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
The Story of a Bad Boy