O. Henry Quotes

One is oneself a fine consequence.

...and the great advantage of being a literary woman, was that you could go everywhere and do everything.

Experience was to be taken as showing that one might get a five-pound note as one got a light for a cigarette; but one had to check the friendly impulse to ask for it in the same way.

It is the peculiar beauty of this method, gentlemen, and one which endears it to the really scientific mind, that under no circumstance can it be of the smallest possible utility.

Large republics seem to be essentially and inherently aggressive.

Abraham Lincoln was the father of a nation and had enormous beliefs that stood well.

To wind the mighty secrets of the past, And turn the key of time.

You only have one thing to sell in life, and that's yourself.

And make sure that capital structure we have in place is the right capital structure. I think that's the reason that we've been successful.

Any fool can buy a company; just pay enough

I think then, 1st, that the only safety of the South from abolition universal is to be found in an early dissolution of the Union.

There ought to be more scrupulous honesty in big business men than in any other human relation. For big business requires teamwork on a gigantic scale.

As civilization progresses, we should improve our laws basically, not superficially. Many things that are lawful are highly immoral and some things which are moral are unlawful.

Bacteria and parasites cannot cause disease processes unless they find their own peculiar morbid soil in which to grow and multiply.

I want to be remembered as someone who tried to bring the story of our ancestors to the broadest possible audience. I want to be remembered as a man who loved his race.

Conspiracy theories are an irresistible labor-saving device in the face of complexity.

The genius is making a way out of no way.

I don't think the riots derailed the civil rights movement.

Where there is no law, but every man does what is right in his own eyes, there is the least of real liberty.

There is a tone of morality throughout the rural districts of England, which is unhappily wanting in the large towns and the centres of particular manufactures

Every day the choice is presented to us, to live up to the spirit that is in us, or deny it.

I found that what I had desired all my life was not to live - if what others are doing is called living - but to express myself.

Even if one’s whole life were a mistake, there is always time to change.

There are only three things to be done with a woman. You can love her, suffer for her, or turn her into literature.

Think only what is right there, what is right under your nose to do. It's such a simple thing - that's why people can't do it.

Cluster together like stars!

Jump off. You are a protected individual. Do not fear.

Many is the mirage I chased. Always I was overreaching myself. The oftener I touched reality, the harder I bounced back to the world of illusion, which is the name for everyday life.

I haven't any allegiance, any responsibilities, any hatreds, any worries, any prejudices, any passion. I'm neither for nor against. I'm a neutral.

To the man whose senses are alive and alert there is not even the need to stir from one's threshold.

I used to think a bird couldn't fly if its wings got wet.

I struggled in the beginning. I said I was going to write the truth, so help me God. And I thought I was. I found I couldn't. Nobody can write the absolute truth.

The best technique is none at all.

Keep your exclamation points under control!

What does it matter how one comes by the truth so long as one pounces upon it and lives by it?

Surrealism is merely the reflection of the death process. It is one of the manifestations of a life becoming extinct, a virus which quickens the inevitable end.

You can travel fifty thousand miles in America without once tasting a piece of good bread.

We kill because we are afraid of our own shadow, afraid that if we used a little common sense we'd have to admit that our glorious principles were wrong.

New York has a trip-hammer vitality which drives you insane with restlessness if you have no inner stabilizer.

There is something else to be said about this immediate, spontaneous way of working, and that is this: in such moments, one is playing at the game of creation.

Don't look for miracles. You yourself are the miracle.

All my good reading, you might say, was done in the toilet.

I had no more need of God than He had of me, and if there were one, I often said to myself, I would meet Him calmly and spit in His face.

Every man is working out his destiny in his own way and nobody can be of any help except by being kind, generous, and patient.

At the bottom of every frozen heart there is a drop or two of love―just enough to feed the birds.

The monstrous thing is not that men have created roses out of this dung heap, but that, for some reason or other, they should want roses.

Remorse is impotence; it will sin again. Only repentance is strong - it can end everything.

All my Calvaries were rosy crucifixions, pseudo-tragedies to keep the fires of hell burning brightly for the real sinners who are in danger of being forgotten.

It is no accident that propels people like us to Paris.

And what is the potential man, after all? Is he not the sum of all that is human? Divine, in other words?