"Brer Rabbit keep on axin' 'im, en de Tar-Baby, she keep on sayin' nothin', twel present'y Brer Rabbit draw back wid his fis', he did, en blip he tuck 'er side er de head. Right dar's whar he broke his merlasses jug. His fis' stuck, en he can't pull loose. De tar hilt 'im."

Joel Chandler Harris Journalism See all quotes by Joel Chandler Harris →

React to this quote

More by Joel Chandler Harris

“Theodore Roosevelt on Brer Rabbit and his Uncle”

“I seem to see before me the smiling faces of thousands of children some young and fresh and some wearing the friendly marks of age. But all children at heart and not an unfriendly face among them. And while I’m trying hard to speak the right word, I seem to hear a voice lifted above the rest saying you have made some of us happy. And so I feel my heart fluttering and my lips trembling, and I have to bow silently and turn away and hurry back into the obscurity that fits me best.”

“Research and Reference Guide. .”

“Lazy fokes's stummucks don't git tired.”

“Licker talks mighty loud w'en it gits loose from de jug.”

“Once upon a time a Georgian printed a couple of books that attracted notice, but immediately it turned out that he was little more than an amanuensis for the local blacks--that his works were really the products, not of white Georgia, but of black Georgia. Writing afterward as a white man, he swiftly subsided into the fifth rank.”

Resonant Thoughts

"To many, perhaps to most people outside the small company of the great scholars, past and present, 'Celtic' of any sort is, nonetheless, a magic bag, into which anything may be put, and out of which a…"

— J. R. R. Tolkien

Literature1892–1973

#time

"Gentlemen of the Convention, your present temper may not mark the healthful pulse of our people. When your enthusiasm has passed, when the emotions of this hour have subsided, we shall find below the …"

— James A. Garfield

Politics1831–1881

#time

"The average man of the present age … does not want to be a sentimentalist in his endeavors; he wants some measure for purposeful activity; he wants to feel that through the world some increasing purpo…"

— Richard Weaver

Politics1575–1642

#time

"At the present moment two things about the Christian religion must surely be clear to anybody with eyes in his head. One is, that men cannot do without it; the other, that they cannot do with it as it…"

— Matthew Arnold

Literature1822–1888

#time