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 … - 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 blue-birds that sang upon the bough when it was in blossom last Spring. In Summer whole flocks of them come fluttering about the fruit-trees under the window: so I have singing birds all the year round.

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

Between the reputation of the author living and the reputation of the same author dead there is ever a wide discrepancy.