O. Henry Quotes

You don't have to hold a position to be a leader.

We must learn to distinguish morality from moralizing.

Most foreign policies that history has marked highly, in whatever country, have been originated by leaders who were opposed by experts.

The essence of Richard Nixon is loneliness.

Even paranoid people have enemies.

People are generally amazed that I would take an interest in any form that would require me to stop talking for three hours.

[Nixon] wants a massive bombing campaign in Cambodia. He doesn't want to hear anything about it. It's an order, to be done. Anything that flies on anything that moves.

In classical oil painting, there seemed to be a radical turn to seeing things as the camera sees them, with that technological modification. I began to have a tremendous problem with all of this.

Around 1967 I began backing away from dogmatic Leninism, not so much because I thought it was false, I just decided there was nothing utopian about it.

I began demonstrating against serious culture. In hindsight, the actual course of events has been very humiliating for me, because no one picked up on the intellectual critique I made.

Wit, like hunger, will be with great difficulty restrained from falling on vice and ignorance, where there is great plenty and variety of food.

It is admirably remarked, by a most excellent writer, that zeal can no more hurry a man to act in direct opposition to itself than a rapid stream can carry a boat against its own current.

Considering the unforeseen events of this world, we should be taught that no human condition should inspire men with absolute despair.

A grave aspect to a grave character is of much more consequence than the world is generally aware of; a barber may make you laugh, but a surgeon ought rather to make you cry.

Fear hath the common fault of a justice of peace, and is apt to conclude hastily from every slight circumstance, without examining the evidence on both sides.

Gravity is the best cloak for sin in all countries.

There is perhaps no surer mark of folly, than to attempt to correct natural infirmities of those we love.

There is nothing a Man of good Sense dreads so much in a Wife, as her having more Sense than himself.

A good conscience is never lawless in the worst regulated state, and will provide those laws for itself which the neglect of legislators had forgotten to supply.

Clergy are men as well as other folks.

Thy modesty 's a candle to thy merit.

In relations with many domestically weak countries, a radio transmitter can be a more effective form of pressure than a squadron B-52s.

There are two considerations which always imbitter the heart of an avaricious man--the one is a perpetual thirst after more riches, the other the prospect of leaving what he has already acquired.

His designs were strictly honourable, as the phrase is; that is, to rob a lady of her fortune by way of marriage.

The devil take me, if I think anything but love to be the object of love.

Yes, I had two strings to my bow; both golden ones, egad! and both cracked.

There is scarcely any man, how much soever he may despise the character of a flatterer, but will condescend in the meanest manner to flatter himself.

It is not from nature, but from education and habits, that our wants are chiefly derived.

It may be laid down as a general rule, that no woman who hath any great pretensions to admiration is ever well pleased in a company where she perceives herself to fill only the second place.

We must eat to live, and not live to eat.

Some virtuous women are too liberal in their insults to a frail sister; but virtue can support itself without borrowing any assistance from the vices of other women.

Thwackum was for doing justice, and leaving mercy to heaven.

Thirst teaches all animals to drink, but drunkenness belongs only to man.

We believe that peace is at hand.

We endeavor to conceal our vices under the disguise of the opposite virtues.

The American temptation is to believe that foreign policy is a subdivision of psychiatry.

There is a middlebrow snobbery in America that praises everything on public television and disdains everything on the commercial networks as a blight.

A Creator must exist. The Big Bang ripples and subsequent scientific findings are clearly pointing to an ex nihilo creation consistent with the first few verses of the book of Genesis.

I do not define my job in any rigid terms but in terms of having the flexibility to what seems to me to be in the best interests of the company at any times.

Strive always to improve the instrument.

The moral and spiritual aspects of both personal and international relationships have a practical bearing which so-called practical men deny.

The United States is evil ... it is the canker of the world.

Nature is not made after such a fashion as we would have her. We piously exaggerate her wonders, as the scenery around our home.

Pity the man who has a character to support - it is worse than a large family - he is silent poor indeed.

I have been breaking silence these twenty-three years and have hardly made a rent in it.

There is an incessant influx of novelty into the world, and yet we tolerate incredible dullness.

No man ever followed his genius till it misled him.

One does every day and without a second thought, what at another time would be the event of a year, perhaps of a life.

Old deeds for old people, and new deeds for new.

In the meanest are all the materials of manhood, only they are not rightly disposed.