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.

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

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

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.

Dwellers by the sea are generally superstitious sailors always are. There is something in the illimitable expanse of sky and water that dilates the imagination.

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

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

When Washington visited Portsmouth in 1789, he was not much impressed by the architecture of the little town that had stood by him so stoutly in the struggle for independence.

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

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

Famous old houses seem to have an intuitive perception of the value of corner lots. If it is a possible thing, they always set themselves down on the most desirable spots.

The possession of gold has ruined fewer men than the lack of it.

After a debauch of thundershower the weather takes the pledge and signs it with a rainbow.

They fail and they alone who have not striven.

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

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 so would I?

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

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!