Bret Harte Quotes

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. ~ Bret Harte

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

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

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

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

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

The dominant expression of a child is gravity. ~ Bret Harte

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

Each lost day has its patron saint! ~ Bret Harte

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

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. ~ Bret Harte

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! ~ Bret Harte

A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing. ~ Bret Harte

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death ~ Bret Harte

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"). ~ Bret Harte

Why not?" she asks petulantly. "Give me one good reason we shouldn't." "Because trying to fuck you is like trying to French-kiss a very ... small and ... lively gerbil?" I tell her. "I don't know." "Yes?" she says. "And?" "With braces?" I finish, shrugging. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

The office Halloween party was at the Royalton last week and I went as a mass murderer, complete with a sign painted on my back that read MASS MURDERER (which was decidedly lighter than the sandwich board I had constructed earlier that day that read DRILLER KILLER), and beneath those two words I had written in blood Yep, that's me and the suit was also covered with blood, some of it fake, most of it real. In one fist I clenched a hank of Victoria Bell's hair, and pinned next to my boutonniere (a small white rose) was a finger bone I'd boiled the flesh off of. As elaborate as my costume was, Craig McDermott still managed to win first place in the competition. He came as Ivan Boesky, which I thought was unfair since a lot of people thought I'd gone as Michael Milken last year. The Patty Winters Show this morning was about Home Abortion Kits. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

People are afraid to merge on freeways in Los Angeles. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

The small words hurt the most." - Kris Harte ~ Kathryn Perez

Life is like a typographical error: we're constantly writing and rewriting things over each other. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

She laughs and looks out the window and I think for a minute that she's going to start to cry. I'm standing by the door and I look over at the Elvis Costello poster, at his eyes, watching her, watching us, and I try to get her away from it, so I tell her to come over here, sit down, and she thinks I want to hug her or something and she comes over to me and puts her arms around my back and says something like 'I think we've all lost some sort of feeling. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

flags would be their final memory of loved ones. "Did Glen have any news?" Carolyn asked. Though the censors would not let them mention anything in their letters, men at the front sometimes heard about planned ~ Amanda Harte

I miss the city Bret and I live in, Wellington. It's a good place to be creative, in the same way New York is. ~ Jemaine Clement

It's like my characters, all my men are Dad and me in a mess; all my female characters are smart and hopeful, like Mom just trying to make the best of things. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

The characters I've played, especially Bret Maverick and Jim Rockford, almost never use a gun, and they always try to use their wits instead of their fists. ~ James Garner

'Rock of Love' with Bret Michaels was fun. He's a lovable guy. ~ Kristen Schaal

As far back as I can remember, I am one of those guys that works hard and plays harder. I have to have both. ~ Bret Michaels

With Taipei Tao Lin becomes the most interesting prose stylist of his generation. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

If he didn't get his cookie, then Harte would reacquaint himself with his hand. ~ Belinda McBride

Price. You're priceless. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

If, in 2008, I could have not been in equities, I wouldn't have been in equities. If I could have not bet on the Seahawks in the Super Bowl, I wouldn't have bet on the Seahawks. Life and statesmanship are not lived with the benefit of hindsight. ~ Bret Stephens

BRET
She looked like a Parisian river..

JEMAINE
What, dirty?

BRET
She looked like a chocolate eclair..

JEMAINE
That's rare.

BRET
Her eyes were reflections of eyes..

JEMAINE
Ohh, nice.

BRET
And the rainbows danced in her hair..

JEMAINE
Oh yea.

BRET
She reminded me of a winter's morning..

JEMAINE
What, frigid?

BRET
Her perfume was Eau De Toilette..

JEMAINE
What's that mean?

BRET
She was comparable to Cleopatra..

JEMAINE
Quite old?

BRET
She was like Shakespeare's Juliet..

JEMAINE
What? 13? ~ Flight Of The Conchords

I learned that you really don't have any control as a writer. Waah, waah, waah. Big deal. Unless you're the director on the movie, or putting up the money for the movie, you really don't have a lot of control. As someone who's just writing scripts, you just kind of have to shrug. I have no problems or issues with screenwriting in general. It is what it is. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I really believe that readers are smart and sophisticated enough to realize that the author is not the narrator of his novels. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

He tasted like chocolate and sin. ~ Jenna Harte

And before I can stop it I find myself almost dazzled and moved that I might have the capacity to accept, though not return, her love. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

The past was a bridge that looked solid and sturdy, but once you were on it, you saw that it extended only far enough to strand you, to suspend you between loss and longing with nowhere to go at all. ~ Bret Anthony Johnston

If I go to prison, will you arrange conjugal visits? ~ Jenna Harte

You really write the books you want to write. You can't take into consideration anything that anybody has said about you in the past, or what they'll say about you in the future. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

And it doesnt really matter if intelligence exists because it is really about the look, the idea of a girl like this, the promise of sex. It's all about the lure. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Are you as much of a criminal if you don't act when there's a crime taking place in front of you as you are one of the participants? That was something that I was thinking about a lot because there are many moments in 'Less Than Zero' where horrific things happen and Clay could do something about them, but his passivity stops him. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

He wished . . . He didn't know what he wished. That he hadn't seen the intentions behind those honey-colored eyes of hers? That he hadn't predicted her duplicity so easily? Or maybe, stupid as he was, he wished that he could stop himself from the inevitability of hurting her? But wishes were for children, and he'd grown up a long time ago. Only one of them could win this game, and it had to be him. ~ Lisa Maxwell

I'd get confused and write down things just to write them down and I came to this realization that I didn't do enough things to keep a datebook. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

Look how black the sky is, the writer said. I made it that way. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

On the plane leaving Tokyo I'm sitting alone in back twisting the knobs on Etch-A-Sketch and Roger is next to me singing "Over the Rainbow" straight into my ear, things changing, falling apart, fading, another year, a few more moves, a hard person who doesn't give a fuck, a boredom so monumental it humbles, arrangements so fleeting made by people you don't even know that it requires you to lose any sense of reality you might have once acquired, expectations so unreasonable you become superstitious about ever matching them. Roger offers me a joint and I take a drag and stare out the window and I relax for a moment when the lights of Tokyo, which I never realized is an island, vanish from view but this feeling only lasts a moment because Roger is telling me that other lights in other cities, in other countries, on other planets, are coming into view soon. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I stare into a thin, web-like crack above the urinal's handle and think to myself that if I were to disappear into that crack, say somehow miniaturize and slip into it, the odds are good that no one would notice I was gone. No ... one ... would ... care. In fact some, if they noticed my absence, might feel an odd, indefinable sense of relief. This is true: the world is better off with some people gone. Our lives are not all interconnected. That theory is crock. Some people truly do not need to be here. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I don't want to care. If I care about things, it'll just be worse, it'll just be another thing to worry about. It's less painful if I don't care. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I am truly independently owned and operated. ~ Bret Michaels

The secret to #success lies in the gap between dream and reality. ~ Bret Michaels

By the time you finish reading this sentence, a Boeing jetliner will take off or land somewhere in the world. ~ Bret Easton Ellis

When I am lonely for boys what I miss is their bodies. The smell of their skin, its saltiness. The rough whisper of stubble against my cheek. The strong firm hands, the way they rest on the curve of my back. ~ A.M. Harte

Of all the life skills available to us, communication is perhaps the most empowering. ~ Bret Morrison

Why was I holding on to something that would never be mine? But isn't that what people do? ~ Bret Easton Ellis

I wasn't acting on passion. I was simply acting. ~ Bret Easton Ellis