Bret Harte
Never a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.Collection: Patience
The only sure thing about luck is that it will change.Collection: Change
Never a lip is curved with pain that can't be kissed into smiles again.Collection: Smile
We begin to die as soon as we are born, and the end is linked to the beginning.
A bird in hand is a certainty. But a bird in the bush may sing.
Man has the possibility of existence after death. But possibility is one thing and the realization of the possibility is quite a different thing.
A bird in the hand is a certainty, but a bird in the bush may sing.Collection: Inspirational
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!'Collection: Might
For the glory born of Goodness Never dies, And its flag is not half-masted In the skies.Collection: Sky
The dominant expression of a child is gravity.Collection: Children
There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is DeathCollection: Swamps
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.Collection: Effort
Each lost day has its patron saint!Collection: Saint
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!Collection: Teaching
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.Collection: Horse
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.Collection: Secret
Nobody shoulders a rifle in defense of a boarding house.Collection: House
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!Collection: Love
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 understatementCollection: Miracle
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.Collection: Honesty
But, when the goddess' work is done,The woman's still remains.Collection: Done
Hark! I hear the tramp of thousands, And of armèd 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.Collection: Men
Your voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still.Collection: Voice
The delicate thought, that cannot find expression, For ruder speech too fair, That, like thy petals, trembles in possession, And scatters on the air.Collection: Air
One big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones.Collection: Men
And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.Collection: Men
Don't be too quickTo break bad habits: better stick,Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.Collection: Arsenic
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.Collection: Writing
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.Collection: Dark
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...Collection: Stories