FastSaying

When I behold what pleasure is Pursuit, What life, what glorious eagerness it is, Then mark how full Possession falls from this, How fairer seems the blossom than the fruit,-- I am perplext, and often stricken mute. Wondering which attained the higher bliss, The wing'd insect, or the chrysalis It thrust aside with unreluctant foot.

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Thomas Bailey Aldrich

Possession

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When a man cuts himself absolutely adrift from custom, what an astonishingly light spar floats him! How few his wants are, after all!
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What is newest to one in foreign countries is not always the people, but their surroundings, and those same little details of life and circumstance which make no impression on a man in his own land until he returns to it after a prolonged absence, and then they stand out very sharply for a while.
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No bird has ever uttered note That was not in some first bird's throat; Since Eden's freshness and man's fall No rose has been original.
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Rome is one enormous mausoleum. There, the Past lies visibly stretched upon his bier. There is no today or tomorrow in Rome; it is perpetual yesterday.
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The dead play a very prominent part in the experience of the wanderer abroad. The houses in which they were born, the tombs in which they lie, the localities they made famous by their good or evil deeds, and the works their genius left behind them are necessarily the chief shrines of his pilgrimage.
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