O. Henry Quotes

All this and heaven too.

Men of polite learning and a liberal education.

Not lost, but gone before.

The King has degenerated into a tyrant and forfeits all rights to his subjects' obedience.

Jealousy is the only vice that gives no pleasure

There is a Book worth all other books which were ever printed.

Righteousness alone can exalt them [America] as a nation. Reader! Whoever thou art, remember this, and in thy sphere practice virtue thyself and encourage it in others.

It is the business of a virtuous clergyman to censure vice in every appearance of it.

Hospitality invites to prayer before it checks credentials, welcomes to the table before administering the entrance exam.

What right do they have to say "we the people" rather than we the States?

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.

Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.

Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.

The Californians are an idle, thriftless people, and can make nothing for themselves. The country abounds in grapes, yet they buy, at a great price, bad wine made in Boston.

On me, on me Time and change can heap no more! The painful past with blighting grief Hath left my heart a withered leaf. Time and change can do no more.

Ye rigid Ploughman! bear in mind Your labor is for future hours. Advance! spare not! nor look behind! Plough deep and straight with all your powers!

There is no death. The thing that we call death Is but another, sadder name for life.

There is no hope the future will but turn the old sand in the falling glass of time.

Heaven is not gone, but we are blind with tears, Groping our way along the downward slope of Years!

We have two lives about us,Two worlds in which we dwell,Within us and without us,Alternate Heaven and Hell:-Without, the somber Real,Within, our hearts of hearts, the beautiful Ideal.

Given the books of a man, it is not difficult, I think, to detect therein the personality of the man, and the station in life to which he was born.

Pale in her fading bowers the Summer stands, Like a new Niobe with claspèd hands, Silent above the flowers, her children lost, Slain by the arrows of the early Frost.

At the beginning, you are 20 and you can just imagine... don't get me wrong, but having money. Then you realise that it's not only about you and what you are doing but that you have to give back.

It's difficult to talk about Pele because I didn't see him.

Where a generation ago people felt entitled to a chance at education, they now feel entitled to the credential affirming that they have completed a course of study regardless of their actual mastery.

Ultimately it is the yearning to believe that anyone can be brought up to college level that has brought colleges down to everyone's level.

Any departure from fact is the first step on a slippery slope toward unbelievability.

In literary composition a well-chosen quotation lights up the page like a fine engraving.

We continued to move forward without loss of time, hoping to be able to reach the wood described by the Indians before all our horses should become exhausted.

The snow continues with high winds we remain at this camp to day in consequence of the weather.

They urged me to take up winter quarters at the forks of the Platt, stating that if I attempted to advance further until spring, I would endanger the lives of my whole party.

Snow is so common that I have omitted to note its falling at least two days out of Three.

Some of them profess to be well acquainted with all the principal waters of the Columbia, with which they assured me these waters had no connection short of the ocean.

Many unbelievers have threatened or prophesied the destruction of the Bible. Few people know the names of the skeptics. Everyone knows the names of Moses and Isaiah and Luke and Paul.

The puma is, with the exception of some monkeys, the most playful animal in existence.

And if any work that I have done should have value beyond my own lifetime, I believe it will be the happy labors of the decade 1869-1878.

The march to our duty here, not merely to ourselves, but to our surroundings, must proceed. God wills it.

The public be damned! (on whether the public should be consulted about luxury trains Aug 1918

I get tired of talking when I want to be silent.

To teach that a comparatively few men are responsible for the greatest forward steps of mankind is the worst sort of nonsense.

I would remind my countrymen that they are to be men first, and Americans only at a late and convenient hour.

It's only by forgetting yourself that you draw near to God.

Mirthfulness is in the mind and you cannot get it out. It is just as good in its place as conscience or veneration.

Interest works night and day in fair weather and in foul. It gnaws at a man's substance with invisible teeth.

Everyone has his own reality in which, if one is not too cautious, timid or frightened, one swims. This is the only reality there is.

The fear of God reigning in the heart is the beauty of the soul.

I shall drink to the Pope, if you please, still, to conscience first, and to the Pope afterwards.

Her reputation for reading a great deal hung about her like the cloudy envelope of a goddess in an epic.

The impetus to grow and live intensely is so powerful in me I cannot resist it. I will work, I will love my husband, but I will fulfill myself.