Bret Harte Quotes
1839–1902 United States
Francis Bret Harte (August 25, 1839 – May 6, 1902) was an American author and poet, best remembered for his accounts of pioneering life in California.
- United States
- 19th-century poets
- Playwrights
- Poets
- Short story writers
Also known as: Francis Bret Hart, Francis Bret Harte
Random Bret Harte quote
19 quotes
Virtue always meets reward,
But quicker when it wears a sword
Never a tear bedims the eye
That time and patience will not dry.
And then, for an old man like me, it's not exactly right,
This kind o' playing soldier with no enemy in sight.
But, when the goddess' work is done,
The woman's still remains.
With the smile that was childlike and bland.
The Heathen Chinee (1870)
Don't be too quick
To break bad habits: better stick,
Like the Mission folk, to your arsenic.
And he says that the mountains are fairer
For once being held in your thought
With all his learning and all his lore;
And the Judge would have bartered Maud's fair face For more refinement and social...
There is peace in the swamp, though the quiet is Death
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 it hadn't ought to be."
Each lost day has its patron saint!
Well, no offense:
Thar ain't no sense
In gittin' riled.
We are ruined by Chinese cheap labor.
The Heathen Chinee (1870)
Over the trackless past, somewhere,
Lie the lost days of our tropic youth,
Only regained by faith and prayer,
Only recalled by prayer and plaint,
Each lost day has its patron saint!
Later, when we were forced to accept the fact that finding gold was really the primary object of a gold-mining company, we still remained there
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.
The Heathen Chinee (1870)
An hour ago, a Star was falling.
A star? There's nothing strange in that.
No, nothing; but above the thicket,
Somehow it seemed to me that God
Somewhere had just relieved a picket.
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 voice of the children gone before.
Drawing the soul to its anchorage.
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.