Bret Harte Quotes

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

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!'

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

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

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

Howbeit, though no scholar, I am not one of those who misuse the English speech, and, being foolishly led by the hasty custom of scriveners and printers to write the letters "T" and "H" joined together, which resembleth a "Y," do incontinently jump to the conclusion the THE is pronounced "Ye,"
the like of which I never heard in all England.

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.

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

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

Nellie was a good girl, and I think had a sort of quiet respect for old Fagg's unobtrusiveness. But her fancy was already taken captive by Rattler's superficial qualities, which were obvious and pleasing. I don't think Nellie was any worse than you or I. We are more apt to take acquaintances at their apparent value than their intrinsic worth. It's less trouble, and, except when we want to trust them, quite as convenient.

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.

The morning was bright and propitious. Before their departure, mass had been said in the chapel, and the protection of St. Ignatius invoked against all contingent evils, but especially against bears, which, like the fiery dragons of old, seemed to cherish unconquerable hostility to the Holy Church. ("The Legend Of Monte Del Diablo").

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

He was known to be a gambler; he was suspected to be a thief.

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!

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 ...

The dominant expression of a child is gravity.

Each lost day has its patron saint!

A bird in 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.

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.

Besides writing, I have been teaching myself to 'develop' my own photographic plates, and I haven't a stick of clothing or an exposed finger that isn't stained. I sit for hours in a dark-room feeling as if I were a very elderly Faust at some dreadful incantation, and come out of it, blinding at the light, like a Bastille prisoner. And yet I am not successful!

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