Quotations

“I firmly believe that the health of autograph hunters, as a class, is excellent.”

A dry punchline to Aldrich's suspicion of collectors who pleaded illness to obtain authors' signatures · Essay, The Autograph Hunter, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“In this little Comedy of Deceptions there are as many players as men have fancies.”

A witty observation on the ingenuity people display when pursuing their private obsessions · Essay, The Autograph Hunter, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“There are few small things more exasperating than this early bird with the worm of his conceit in his bill.”

Mocking the self-satisfaction that sometimes accompanies supposedly virtuous habits · Essay, On Early Rising, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“I have no patience with the worm, and when I rise with the lark I am always careful to select a lark that has overslept himself.”

A playful defence of sleeping late disguised as practical wisdom · Essay, On Early Rising, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“The fate of the worm refutes the pretended ethical teaching of the proverb, which assumes to illustrate the advantage of early rising and does so by showing how extremely dangerous it is.”

Turning a familiar proverb upside down by considering events from the worm's perspective · Essay, On Early Rising, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“The intelligent reader, and no other is supposable, need not be told that the early bird aphorism is a warning and not an incentive.”

Comically overturning the familiar moral attached to the early bird proverb · Essay, On Early Rising, in Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“The survival in publishers of the imitative instinct is a strong argument in support of Mr. Darwin's theory of the descent of man.”

A satirical jab at the publishing industry's tendency to imitate whatever has recently succeeded · Ponkapog Papers, Leaves from a Note Book (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“The fool and his bookplate are soon parted.”

A bibliophile's joke about destroying the meaning of ownership marks by distributing them as collectibles · Ponkapog Papers, Leaves from a Note Book (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“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.”

A characteristically sharp expression of Aldrich's distrust of fashionable dialect writing · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

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

A dry observation on how difficult it is to recognise one's own capacity to bore others · Essay collection, Ponkapog Papers (1903)

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

“The English press would do well to remember that the Welshman has two eyes: one reads Welsh and the other reads English.”

Original: Byddai yn eithaf peth i'r wasg Seisnig gofio fod dau lygad gan y Cymro—un yn darllen Cymraeg, a'r llall yn darllen Saesneg. — A witty defence of Welsh readers against careless outside criticism · Gorsedd paper, National Eisteddfod Rhyl, 1892 (Welsh)

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