Top 102 Quotes & Sayings by O. Henry

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).

It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.

It is said that love makes the world go 'round - the announcement lacks verification. It's wind from the dinner horn that does it.

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.

It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an agriculturist.

Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark.

The people of the State of Texas consist principally of men, women, and children, with a sprinkling of cowboys. The weather is very good, thermometer rarely rising above 2,500 degrees in the shade and hardly ever below 212.

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.

I have been called 'The American De Maupassant.' Well, I never wrote a filthy word in my life, and I don't like to be compared to a filthy writer.

By rights you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal.

It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.

Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.

Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

The Venturer is one who keeps his eye on the hedgerows and wayside groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune.

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.

When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

I never have time to read now. I did all my reading before I was twenty.

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

Women's weapon, water-drops.

When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.

My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.

A holiday in a new dress?can earth offer anything more enchanting?

Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.

No friendship is an accident.

Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.

You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.

Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.

There is no well defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in the one domain and sometimes in the other.

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

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.

If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life

The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.

We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.

Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides.

To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.

All great men have declared that they owe their sucess to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.

Those whom we first love we seldom marry

If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's.

All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best

Beauty is Nature in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples, the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter, and the "round" of drinks.

It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.

I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.

Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.

Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's.

It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.

I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.