Bret Harte famous quotes

04-17-2025

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

#Hands #Bird #May
The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.
-- Bret Harte

#Luck #Sure Thing
Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again.
-- Bret Harte

#Life #Smile #Pain
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

#Children #Lying #Drawing
Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.
-- Bret Harte

#Eye #Tears #Dry
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

#Horse #Passion #Animal
Your voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still.
-- Bret Harte

#Voice #Darkness #Bells
Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armÃ¨d men the hum; Lo, a nation's hosts have gathered Round the quick alarming drum Saying, Come, Freemen, Come! Ere your heritage be wasted, Said the quick alarming drum.
-- Bret Harte

#Men #Heritage #Arms
But, when the goddess' work is done,The woman's still remains.
-- Bret Harte

#Done #Goddess #Stills
There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death
-- Bret Harte

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

#Arsenic #Sticks #Habit
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

#Men #Sight #Soldier
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

#Writing #Together #Letters
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

#Love #Men #Disease
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

#Honesty #Mind #Speak
The creator who could put a cancer in a believer's stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.
-- Bret Harte

#God #Prayer #Cancer
One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones.
-- Bret Harte

#Men #Vices #Great Men
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

#Air #Expression #Speech
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

#Dark #Wish #Deceit
The dominant expression of a child is gravity.
-- Bret Harte

#Children #Expression #Childhood
Each lost day has its patron saint!
-- Bret Harte

#Saint #Lost #Patron
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

#Might #Tongue #Might Have Been
For the glory born of Goodness Never dies, And its flag is not half-masted In the skies.
-- Bret Harte

#Sky #Flags #Half

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