Quotes from Thomas Bailey Aldrich

The possession of unlimited power will make a despot of almost any man. There is a possible Nero in the gentlest human creature that walks.

When the Sultan Shah-Zaman Goes to the city Ispahan, Even before he gets so far As the place where the clustered palm-trees are, At the last of the thirty palace-gates The pet of the harem, Rose-in-Bloom, Orders a feast in his favorite room-- Glittering square of colored ice, Sweetened with syrup, tinctured with spice, Creams, and cordials, and sugared dates, Syrian apples, Othmanee quinces, Limes and citrons and apricots, And wines that are known to Eastern princes.

If my best wines mislike thy taste, And my best service win thy frown, Then tarry not, I bid thee haste; There's many another Inn in town.

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

What probing deep Has ever solved the mystery of sleep?

Turn on its noiseless hinges, delicate sleep!

In her eyes a thought Grew sweeter and sweeter, deepening like the dawn, A mystical forewarning.

Here is woe, a self and not the mask of woe.

Somewherein desolate wind-swept space In Twilight-landin No-mans land Two hurrying Shapes met face to face, And bade each other stand.

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.

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?

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.

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).

Upon the cunning loom of thought We weave our fancies, so and so.

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.

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.

All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hourglass. If I could only reverse it!

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

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

A glance, a word -- and joy or pain befalls.... How slight the links are in the chain that binds us to our destiny!

Since Eden's freshness and man's fall, no rose has been original.

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.

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.

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.