O. Henry Quotes

The indulgence of revenge tends to make men more savage and cruel.

Fold him in his country's stars. Roll the drum and fire the volley! What to him are all our wars, What but death bemocking folly?

No man ever did a designed injury to another, but at the same time he did a greater to himself.

Ridicule, which chiefly arises from pride, a selfish passion, is but at best a gross pleasure, too rough an entertainment for those who are highly polished and refined.

Good ale, the true and proper drink of Englishmen. He is not deserving of the name of Englishman who speaketh against ale, that is good ale.

We must walk before we run.

Youth will be served, every dog has his day, and mine has been a fine one.

It has been said that idleness is the parent of mischief, which is very true; but mischief itself is merely an attempt to escape from the dreary vacuum of idleness.

The tendency of welfare spending in the United States has been to increase at an exponential rate.

Would-be income guarantors ignore or despise the capitalistic system that makes their dreams dreamable and gives their redistribute-the-income proposals whatever plausibility they have.

The long-run historical tendency of capitalism has not only been to increase real incomes more or less proportionately nearly all along the line, but to benefit the masses even more than the rich.

A losing trade, I assure you, sir: literature is a drug.

Capitalism will continue to eliminate mass poverty in more and more places and to an increasingly marked extent if it is merely permitted to do so.

The real people of genius were resolute workers not idle dreamers.

The only way government bureaucrats know of keeping prosperity going is to inflate some more - to increase the deficit or to pump more money into the system.

The only real cure for poverty is production.

All bad Literature rests upon imperfect insight, or upon imitation, which may be defined as seeing at second-hand.

It is always safe to assume, not that the old way is wrong, but that there may be a better way.

That most sensitive, most delicate of instruments -- the mind of a little child!

A cell is regarded as the true biological atom.

We don't have a full black community in Boston. Our people are scattered. There's a middle class where I live in Highland Park but it's not like a piece of Washington or Chicago.

If you're black in America, race is a factor in your life. Start with that assumption.

What drives people to public service is a sense of possibility. If you haven't sensed that possibility you don't get started in the same way, you don't feel you can have an impact.

The damning tho't stuck in my throat and cut me like a knife, That she, whom all my life I'd loved, should be another's wife.

Look, in neoliberalism the ruling elite understand something.

The great desire of this age is for a doctrine which may serve to condense our knowledge, guide our researches, and shape our lives, so that conduct may really be the consequence of belief

Books have become our dearest companions, yielding exquisite delights and inspiring lofty aims.

If you would wish the dog to follow you, feed him

Hunger finds no fault with the cookery.

He who has good health is young.

Nature, time and patience are three great physicians.

God showers upon us his gifts-more than enough for all; But like swine scrambling for food, we tread them in the mire, and rend each other.

I do not think that any sorrow of youth or manhood equalled in intensity or duration the black and hopeless misery which followed the wrench of transference from a happy home to a school.

The value of a thing is the amount of laboring or work that its possession will save the possessor.

The march of invention has clothed mankind with powers of which a century ago the boldest imagination could not have dreamt.

To some men popularity is always suspicious. Enjoying none themselves, they are prone to suspect the validity of those attainments which command it.

Everybody works but the vacant lot

That amid our highest civilization men faint and die with want is not due to the niggardliness of nature, but to the injustice of man.

Progressive societies outgrow institutions as children outgrow clothes.

The methods by which a trade union can alone act, are necessarily destructive; its organization is necessarily tyrannical.

Literature delivers tidings of the world within and the world without.

No man was ever eloquent by trying to be eloquent, but only by being so.

In Science the paramount appeal is to the Intellect-its purpose being instruction; in Art, the paramount appeal is to the Emotions-its purpose being pleasure.

The people themselves must think, because the people alone can act.

Among the many strange servilities mistaken for pieties, one of the least lovely is that which hopes to flatter God by despising the world, and vilifying human nature.

Music has been in our family for generations.

Raffael's drapery is the assistant of character, in Michelangelo it envelopes grandeur; it is in Reubens the ponderous robe of pomp.

When we idealize the real, we sacrifice to artistic fancy.

A man may be variously accomplished, and yet be a feeble poet.

Abide with me: fast falls the eventide; The darkness deepens; Lord, with me abide.