"Great orators who are not also great writers become very indistinct shadows to the generations following them. The spell vanishes with the voice."

Thomas Bailey Aldrich Literature See all quotes by Thomas Bailey Aldrich →

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

“All the best sands of my life are somehow getting into the wrong end of the hour-glass. If I could only reverse it! Were it in my power to do so, would I?”

“It is the Lord's Day, and I do believe that cheerful hearts and faces are not unpleasant in His sight.”

“Conservatism and respectability have their values, certainly; but has not the unconventional its values also?”

“O harp of life, so speedily unstrung!”

“Dialect tempered with slang is an admirable medium of communication between persons who have nothing to say and persons who would not care for anything properly said.”

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