Bret Harte Quotes

#1. A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.

Bret Harte

#2. There was, I think, a prevailing
impression common to the provincial mind, that his misfortune was
the result of the defective moral quality of his being a stranger.

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#4. Perhaps there is no gift of nature that requires as little exertion on the part of the owner as personal beauty. I am not certain but that it is this very absence of effort which excites our admiration.

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#6. The dominant expression of a child is gravity.

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#8. Tommy, you're a good little man, but you can't gamble worth a cent. Don't try it over again.' He then handed him his money back, pushed him gently from the room, and so made a devoted slave of Tom Simson.

Bret Harte

#9. Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.

Bret Harte

#10. It would seem evident, therefore, that the secret of the American short story was the treatment of characteristic American life, with absolute knowledge of its peculiarities and sympathy with its method ...

Bret Harte

#11. 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.

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#14. I've had some mighty mean moments afore I kem to this spot,
Lost on the plains in '50, drowned almost, and shot;
But out on this alkali desert, a hunting a crazy wife,
Was ra'ly as on-satis-factory as anything in my life.

Bret Harte

#15. Nobody shoulders a rifle in defense of a boarding house.

Bret Harte

#16. 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!

Bret Harte

#17. There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#20. 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.

Bret Harte

#21. Each lost day has its patron saint!

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#23. The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.

Bret Harte

#24. 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!'

Bret Harte

#25. 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.

Bret Harte

#26. Crude at first [the short story] received a literary polish in the press, but its dominant quality remained. It was concise and condense, yet suggestive. It was delightfully extravagant - or a miracle of understatement

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#28. There was a Sabbath lull in the air, which, in a settlement unused to Sabbath influences, looked ominous.

Bret Harte

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

Bret Harte

#30. We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.

Bret Harte

#31. 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.

Bret Harte