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 HARTEThe delicate thought, that cannot find expression, For ruder speech too fair, That, like thy petals, trembles in possession, And scatters on the air.
BRET HARTELove 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 HARTEThe dominant expression of a child is gravity.
BRET HARTEDon’t be too quickTo break bad habits: better stick,Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.
BRET HARTEThiar ain’t no sense In gittin’ riled!
BRET HARTEThe only sure thing about luck is that it will change.
BRET HARTENever a lip is curved with pain that can’t be kissed into smiles again.
BRET HARTEBut 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 HARTEYour voices break and falter in the darkness, Break, falter, and are still.
BRET HARTEWhich 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 HARTEOne big vice in a man is apt to keep out a great many smaller ones.
BRET HARTEIf, 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 HARTEEach lost day has its patron saint!
BRET HARTECrude 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 HARTEThe creator who could put a cancer in a believer’s stomach is above being interfered with by prayers.
BRET HARTENever a tear bedims the eye that time and patience will not dry.
BRET HARTE