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…"

"Books that have become classics—books that have had their day and now get more praise than perusal—always remind me of venerable colonels and majors and captains who, having reached the age limit, fin…"

"My dear Mr. Morse: It was very 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 anythin…"

"A man is known by the company his mind keeps."

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

"If you chance to live in a town where the authorities cannot rest until they have destroyed every precious tree within their blighting reach, you will be especially charmed by the beauty of the street…"

"What is slang in one age sometimes goes into the vocabulary of the purist in the next."

"Shakespeare is forever coming into our affairs—putting in his oar, so to speak—with some pat word or sentence."