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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."

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Writing

More quotes by Bret Harte

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)

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Reading maketh a full man; conference a ready man; and writing an exact man.

Francis Bacon Meditationes sacræ (1597)

Strength of creative writing lies in the skill of handling words and articulating artistic expression of feelings.”

Suman Pokhrel

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley

Three sleepless nights I passed in sounding on,
Through words and things, a dim and perilous way.

William Wordsworth Bartlett's Familiar Quotations, 10th ed (1919)

Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: Bret Harte (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.