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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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?

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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.

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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 doorbell!

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

— Thomas Bailey Aldrich