Best 91 quotes of O. Henry on MyQuotes

O. Henry

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    O. Henry

    A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    A holiday in a new dress—can earth offer anything more enchanting?

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    O. Henry

    All great men have declared that they owe their sucess to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.

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    O. Henry

    [A]ll of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in life we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate -- and sit upon a bench.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

    A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

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    O. Henry

    Be always decent and right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

    Bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.

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    O. Henry

    Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.

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    O. Henry

    But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but makes laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make laws to repeal aforesaid laws.

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    O. Henry

    But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat--the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions--ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable--the mutual help and inspiration; and--overlook my artlessness--stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m.

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    O. Henry

    By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.

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    O. Henry

    By rights you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.

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    O. Henry

    Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.

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    O. Henry

    Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.

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    O. Henry

    If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what they sing.

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    O. Henry

    If there was ever an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptouwn on the Hudson called New York

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    O. Henry

    If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches.

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    O. Henry

    It gives men courage and ambition and the nerve for anything. It has the colour of gold, is clear as a glass and shines after dark as if the sunshine were still in it.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides.

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    O. Henry

    My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.

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    O. Henry

    No friendship is an accident.

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    O. Henry

    Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen - the census taker - and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million.

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    O. Henry

    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.

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    O. Henry

    O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's.

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    O. Henry

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

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    O. Henry

    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.