126 Quotes by Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.

What is lovely never dies, but passes into other loveliness, Star-dust, or sea-foam, flower or winged air.

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.

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!

We weep when we are born, not when we die!

A man is known by the company his mind keeps.

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

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.

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