O. Henry Quotes

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.

We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.

It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.

Beauty is Nature in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples, the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter, and the "round" of drinks.

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.

No friendship is an accident.

Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.

I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.

Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark.

To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.

Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.

Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle.

All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best

When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.

When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).

If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's.

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.

In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out.

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.

Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.

In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in its greatness.

The magi, as you know, were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.

It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age; youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.

It's said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it.

East is East, and West is San Francisco

What else can you expect from a town thats shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?

You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get a chance to learn. Every thing's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are bailed hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?

Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.

Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.

It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.

There is no well defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in the one domain and sometimes in the other.