O. Henry Quotes

A universityeducates the intellect to reason well in all matters, to reach out towards truth, and to grasp it.

I want a laitywho know their creed so well, that they can give an account of it, who know so much of history that they can defend it.

Go down again - I dwell among the people.

How many writers are there... who, breaking up their subject into details, destroy its life, and defraud us of the whole by their anxiety about the parts.

To discover and to teach are distinct functions; they are also distinct gifts, and are not commonly found united in the same person.

To the irreligious person heaven would be hell.

Living Nature, not dull art Shall plan my ways and rule my Heart.

A great memory is never made synonymous with wisdom, any more than a dictionary would be called a treatise.

Religion indeed enlightens, terrifies, subdues; it gives faith, it inflicts remorse, it inspires resolutions, it draws tears, it inflames devotion, but only for the occasion.

There is such a thing as legitimate warfare: war has its laws; there are things which may fairly be done, and things which may not be done.

Time hath a taming hand.

I loved the garish day, and, spite of fears, Pride ruled my will: remember not past years.

Stuffing birds or playing stringed instruments is an elegant pastime, and a resource to the idle, but it is not education.

Where good and ill together blent, Wage an undying strife.

Man is emphatically self-made.

"The Church of England," I said, seeing that Mr. Inglesant paused, "is no doubt a compromise."

I believe that there is a future in anything that one is vitally interested in.

In all God's providences, it is good to compare His word and His works together; for we shall find a beautiful harmony between them, and that they mutually illustrate each other.

Prayer is the breath of the new man, drawing in the air of mercy in petitions, and returning it in praises; it proves and maintains the spiritual life.

Poor people are as much in danger from an inordinate desire towards the wealth of the world as rich from an inordinate delight in it.

The greatest of men must turn beggars when they have to do with Christ.

It is better to get wisdom than gold. Gold is another's, wisdom is our own; gold is for the body and time, wisdom for the soul and eternity.

All obedience begins in the affections, and nothing in religion is done right, that is not done there first.

He that is in haste may contract much guilt in a little time. What we say or do unadvisedly when we are hot, we must unsay or undo again when we are cool, or do worse.

Take Jesus for your king, and by baptism swear allegiance to him; take him for your prophet, and hear him; take him for your priest, to make atonement for you.

Why wilt thou be so sottish, such an enemy to thyself, as to prefer puddle-water, and that poisoned too and stolen, before pure living waters out of thy own well?

The beauty of holiness is that which the grave, that consumes all other beauty, cannot touch, or do any damage to.

We must believe that He is able to do what He will, wise to do what is best, and good, according to His promise, to do what is best for us, if we love Him, and serve Him.

Esther came to a proud imperious man; we come to the God of love and grace.

We cannot expect too little from man nor too much from God.

Men may die like lambs and yet have their place forever with the goats.

We read of preaching the Word out of season, but we do not read of praying out of season, for that is never out of season.

The streams of religion run deep or shallow, according as the banks of the Sabbath are kept up or neglected.

Conscience is that candle of the Lord which was not quite put out.

...When we are waiting upon God to bless us, we should stir up ourselves to bless him.

Earth is embittered to us, that heaven may be endeared.

Were a man to live as long as Methuselah, and to spend all his days in the highest delights sin can offer, one hour of the anguish and tribulation that must follow, would far outweigh them.

Their own second and sober thoughts.

When he [the slothful person] is pressed to be diligent, either in his worldly affairs or in the business of religion, this is his excuse (and a sorry excuse it is as bad as none).

Those that are above business.

Though we must never think to learn above our Bible, as long as we are here in this world, yet we must still be getting forward in it.

I am not a Virginian, I am an American.

Souls bound together can't be forever torn apart by distance and neither by death.

The choices we make when we're broken are sometimes the most awful of all our choices.

This is now and forever - the moment everyone must have, the moment that encompasses all other moments; now and before, now and after: all time.

As an economist, I'm aware that life is full of trade offs.

Disciplined governments do not engage in the economic equivalent of binge eating followed by crash dieting.

In Jamaica, you're never very far away from people who don't have very much, and in Wilmette, pretty much everybody had a lot.

You can actually make a lot of money and do a lot of good in the world. I don't see those things as being in opposition to one another. I never have.

I think that whether you're on the right or on the left as an economist or as a policy maker, every serious analyst I know agrees that at some point you have to deal with entitlements.