O. Henry Quotes

The brightest light makes the blackest mark.

An infallible way to make your child miserable is to satisfy all his demands.

Nothing so uncertain as general reputation. A man injures me from humor, passion, or interest; hates me because he has injured me; and speaks ill of me because he hates me.

A great mind will neither give an affront nor bear it.

Who hath not courage to revenge will never find generosity to forgive.

We part more easily with what we possess, than with our expectations of what we wish for; because expectation always goes beyond enjoyment.

Whoever appears to have much cunning has in reality very little; being deficient in the essential article, which is, to hide cunning.

Nothing more excites to everything noble and generous, than virtuous love.

False praise is always confined to the great.

Even dress is apt to inflame a man's opinion of himself.

Genius is allied to a warm and inflammable constitution; delicacy of taste, to calmness and sedateness. Hence it is common to find genius in one who is a prey to every passion.

Great wants proceed from great wealth; but they are undutiful children, for they sink wealth down to poverty.

Every man, however little, makes a figure in his own eyes.

The coward reckons himself cautious, the miser frugal.

If you should escape the censure of others, hope not to escape your own.

Custom is the great leveller. It corrects the inequality of fortune by lessening equally the pleasures of the prince and the pains of the peasant.

As nice as we are in love, we forgive more faults in that than in friendship.

A rich man cannot enjoy a sound mind nor a sound body without exercise and abstinence; and yet these are truly the worst ingredients of poverty.

I don't want to be in a movie with 20 minutes of dialogue and then stand around while the robots start explosions.

I resisted being an actor for some time.

I see myself as a creative being. My only fear is compromising my integrity. I guess that's a constant struggle.

You can very easily be turned into a commodity. I've grown up with it.

Until you have heard the whippoowill, either nearby or in the fain - distance, you have not experienced summer night.

To be without a dog is worse than being without a song.

Thus I alone, where all my freedom grew, In prison pine with bondage and restraint; And with remembrance of the greater grief To banish the less, I find my chief relief.

After all we are merely the servants of the public, in spite of our M.D.'s and our hospital appointments.

I'm opposed to censure, .. Whether or not one will be permitted, it's under discussion. It isn't ruled out, but it's not a dead-bang certainty either.

I think it's fair to have a vote on a resolution for censure.

In an ideal world, I'd love to work on something that is on par with 'Lost' or better than 'Lost.

When I'm acting, I've always got to make it make sense to me why I do anything. Whether it's right or wrong, I've just got to believe this is the reason why I am doing this and just go with it.

I love working in TV. TV is fast. You shoot it and it's done quickly.

Being in Hawaii, it's almost impossible not to be fit, I think.

I feel like I'm part of television history.

Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly.

If you're the sort of person that likes a job where once you know what you're doing you can keep doing what you're doing, don't ever become a film composer.

Some directors are comfortable with music. Some feel comfortable discussing and talking and operating in a musical language. Others don't engage so much.

There's a whole gamut of things to do with film music that don't apply when you're making a record or if you're writing a concert piece or something.

Dying is nothing, but pain is a very serious matter.

The power to guess the unseen from the seen, to trace the implications of things, to judge the whole piece by the pattern . . . this cluster of gifts may almost be said to constitute experience.

You are good for nothing unless you are clever.

God's creature is one. He makes man, not men. His true creature is unitary and infinite, revealing himself, indeed, in every finite form, but compromised by none.

You wanted to look at life for yourself - but you were not allowed; you were punished for your wish. You were ground in the very mill of the conventional.

To believe in a child is to believe in the future. Through their aspirations they will save the world. With their combined knowledge the turbulent seas of hate and injustice will be calmed.

All roads lead to Rome, and there were times when it might have struck us that almost every branch of study or subject of conversation skirted forbidden ground.

Things are always different than what they might be...If you wait for them to change, you will never do anything.

The black and merciless things that are behind the great possessions.

Sometimes she went so far as to wish that she should find herself in a difficult position, so that she might have the pleasure of being as heroic as the occasion demanded.

My sole wish is to frustrate as utterly as possible the post-mortem exploiter.

We must for dear life make our own counter-realities.

do you think it is better to be clever than to be good?” “Good for what?” asked the Doctor. “You are good for nothing unless you are clever.