Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

"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 dont think that I mastered anything beyond the date (which I knew) and the signature (which I guessed at). Theres a singular and a perpetual charm in a letter of yours; it never grows old, it never loses its novelty. One can say to ones self every morning: "Theres that letter of Morses. I havent read it yet. I think Ill take another shy at it to-day, and maybe I shall be able in the course of a few years to make out what he means by those ts that look like ws and those is that havent any eyebrows." Other letters are read and thrown away and forgotten, but yours are kept forever—unread. One of them will last a reasonable man a lifetime."

"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."

"Decoration Day is the most beautiful of our national holidays.[…] The grim cannon have turned into palm branches, and the shell and shrapnel into peach blossoms."

"There is always a heavy demand for fresh mediocrity. In every generation the least cultivated taste has the largest appetite."

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