O. Henry Quotes

What a man thinks of himself, that it is which determines, or rather indicates, his fate.

God himself culminates in the present moment, and will never be more divine in the lapse of all the ages.

Never forget what a man says to you when he is angry.

Whether you think you can, or you think you can't--you're right.

Thinking is the hardest work there is, which is probably the reason so few engage in it.

Do not be too moral. You may cheat yourself out of much life so. Aim above morality. Be not simply good, be good for something.

There is no such thing as accomplishing a righteous reform by the use of 'expediency.' There is no such thing as sliding up hill. In morals, the only sliders are backsliders.

Whether you think you can, or think you can't - you're right.

What is most of our boasted so-called knowledge but a conceit that we know something, which robs us of the advantage of our actual ignorance?

We never know the love of a parent till we become parents ourselves.

The silence rings—it is musical & thrills me. A night in which the silence was audible—I hear the unspeakable.

Silence is the communing of a conscious soul with itself.

The fate of the country... does not depend on what kind of paper you drop into the ballot-box once a year, but on what kind of man you drop from your chamber into the street every morning.

for the people must have some complicated machinery or other, and hear its din, to satisfy that idea of government which they have.

The value of a man is not in his skin, that we should touch him.

A government which deliberately enacts injustice, and persists in it, will at length ever become the laughing-stock of the world.

It is a very remarkable and significant fact that though no man is quite well or healthy yet every one believes practically that health is the rule & disease the exception.

We now no longer camp as for a night, but have settled down on earth and forgotten heaven

We are more of the earth, Farther from heaven these days.

We have heard the chimes at midnight, Master Shallow

Pride slays thanksgiving ... A prideful man is seldom a grateful man, for he never thinks he gets as much as he deserves.

I don't have talent, I have tenacity.

Now-a-days, men wear a fool's cap, and call it a liberty cap.

I would rather sit on a pumpkin, and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

A man thinking or working will always be alone, let him be where he will.

Your church is a baby-house made of blocks.

Our life is frittered away by detail...Simplicity, simplicity, simplicity! I say, let our affairs be as two or three, and not a hundred or a thousand...Simplify, simplify!

Enthusiasm is the yeast that makes your hopes shine to the stars.

the difference between perseverance and obstinacy is that one comes from a strong will and the other from a strong won't

that he live in all respects so compactly and preparedly that, if an enemy take the town, he can, like the old philosopher, walk out the gate empty-handed without anxiety.

Death is the dropping of the flower, that the fruit may, swell.

Not that the story need be long, but it will take a long while to make it shor

Thu luxury of one class is counterbalanced by the indigence of another.

Do you want to know the cause of war? It is capitalism, greed, the dirty hunger for dollars. Take away the capitalist, and you will sweep war from the earth.

For some there is no musicNo lightsNo fireNo untamed madness that breathes lifeThere is workAnguishFrustrationRageDespairA dullness that rings like wooden thunder

It is not enought to be busy, so are the ants. The question is: What are we busy about?

The true price of anything you do is the amount of time you exchange for it.

To enjoy a thing exclusively is commonly to exlcude yourself from the true enjoyment of it.

I charge thee, fling away ambition. By that sin fell the angels.

Verily, I swear, 'tis better to be lowly born, and range with humble livers in content, than to be perk'd up in a glistering grief, and wear a golden sorrow.

His jest shall savour but a shallow wit, when thousands more weep than did laugh it.

If we would aim at perfection in any thing, simplicity must not be overlooked.

The boy gathers materials for a temple, and then when he is thirty, concludes to build a woodshed

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.

But if it be a sin to covet honour, I am the most offending soul alive.

Genius is not a retainer to any emperor, or is its material silver, or gold, or marble, except to a trifling extent.

It is truly enough said that a corporation has no conscience. But a corporation of conscientious men is a corporation with a conscience.

Is there not a sort of blood shed when the conscience is wounded? Through this wound a man's real manhood and immortality flow out, and he bleeds to an everlasting death

No man is sane who does not know how to be insane on the proper occasions."Henry Ward Beecher

I believe that, in this country, the press exerts a greater and a more pernicious influence than the church did in its worst period. We are not a religious people, but we are a nation of politicians.