Bret Harte Quotes

The delicate thought, that cannot find expression, For ruder speech too fair, That, like thy petals, trembles in possession, And scatters on the air.

Don't be too quickTo break bad habits: better stick,Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.

A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.

Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again.

The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.

Never a tear bedims the eye That time and patience will not dry.

If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, It might have been,' More sad are these we daily see: 'It is, but hadn't ought to be!'

The dominant expression of a child is gravity.

For the glory born of Goodness Never dies, And its flag is not half-masted In the skies.

Each lost day has its patron saint!

But still when the mists of doubt prevail, And we lie becalmed by the shores of age, We hear from the misty troubled shore The voce of children gone before. Drawing the soul to its anchorage.

It may be broadly stated that.....of all animals kept for the recreation of mankind the horse is alone capable of exciting a passion that shall be absolutely hopeless.

Which I wish to remark-- And my language is plain,-- That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain, The heathen Chinee is peculiar.

Your voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still.

When folks find I ain't afeard to speak my mind on their affairs, they kinder guess I'm tellin' the truth about my own.

Love differs from all the other contagious diseases: the last time a man is exposed to it, he takes it most readily, and has it the worst!

Thiar ain't no sense In gittin' riled!

Nobody shoulders a rifle in defense of a boarding house.

One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones.

There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death

But, when the goddess' work is done,The woman's still remains.

And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.

Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.

Which I wish to remark - And my language is plain - That for ways that are dark And for tricks that are vain The heathen Chinese is peculiar.

There was, I think, a prevailingimpression common to the provincial mind, that his misfortune wasthe result of the defective moral quality of his being a stranger.

If, of all words of tongue and pen, The saddest are, 'It might have been, 'More sad are these we daily see:'It is, but hadn't ought to be.