41 Quotes by Bret Harte

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.

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.

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.

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

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...

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

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!'