Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent--that is to triumph over old age.

The man who suspects his own tediousness is yet to be born.

They fail, and they alone, who have not striven.

Everywhere on the Continent, the tourist is looked upon as a bird to be plucked, and presently the bird himself feebly comes to regard plucking as his proper destiny and abjectly holds out his wing so long as there is a feather left on it.

To keep the heart unwrinkled, to be hopeful, kindly, cheerful, reverent - that is to triumph over old age.

What is newest to one in foreign countries is not always the people, but their surroundings, and those same little details of life and circumstance which make no impression on a man in his own land until he returns to it after a prolonged absence, and then they stand out very sharply for a while.

In every age have mighty spirits dwelt unseen with man, biding the hour that needed them.

A habit leads a man so gently in the beginning that he does not perceive he is led - with what silken threads and down what pleasant avenues it leads him! By and by, the soft silk threads become iron chains, and the pleasant avenues Avernus!

Nothing except time is wasted in Italy.

They fail and they alone who have not striven.

Civilization is the lamb's skin in which barbarism masquerades.

What is lovely never dies but passes into another loveliness Star dust or sea foam Flower or winged air.

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.

There must be such a thing as a child with average ability, but you can't find a parent who will admit that it is his child.

Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.

To the mass of mankind - meaning also womankind - marriage may be the only possible thing; but to the individual, it may be the one thing impossible.

October turned my maple's leaves to gold; The most are gone now; here and there one lingers; Soon these will slip from out the twig's weak hold, Like coins between a dying miser's fingers.

How fugitive and brief is mortal life between the budding and the falling leaf.

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

To keep the heart unwrinkled to be hopeful kindly cheerful reverent that is to triumph over old age.

The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the tombs in which they lie, the localities they made famous by their good or evil deeds, and the works their genius left behind them are necessarily the chief shrines of his pilgrimage.

What is lovely never dies, put passes into other loveliness.

There is no man at once so unselfish and selfish as a man in love.

The ocean moans over dead men's bones.

A man should have duties outside of himself; without them, he is a mere balloon, inflated with thin egotism and drifting nowhere.

Everyone ought to wish to marry; some ought to be allowed to marry; and others ought to marry twice - to make the average good.

A man may do worse than make what the world calls a not wholly happy marriage.

True art selects and paraphrases, but seldom gives a verbatim translation.

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.

After a debauch of thunder-shower, the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow.

Night is a stealthy, evil Raven, Wrapt to the eyes in his black wings.

A girl does not treat a possible lover with unvarying simplicity and directness. In all its phases, love is complex; friendship is not.

To be weak, and to know it, is something of a punishment for a proud man.

What is lovely never dies, But passes into other loveliness.