O. Henry Quotes and Sayings - Page 1

“The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.”
-- O. Henry

#Adventure #Fate #Adventurer

“There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.”
-- O. Henry

#Thanksgiving #One Day #Thanksgiving Day

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

#People #Cash #Rich

“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.”
-- O. Henry

#Sweet #Silence #Done

“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.”
-- O. Henry

#Life #Reflection #Littles

“There are stories in everything. I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lampposts, and newspaper stands.”
-- O. Henry

#Yarn #Benches #Parks

“No friendship is an accident.”
-- O. Henry

#Friendship #Inspiring #Funny Best Friend

“Write what you like; there is no other rule.”
-- O. Henry

#Writing

“In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out.”
-- O. Henry

#Men #Cities #Flames

“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.”
-- O. Henry

#Mushrooms #People #Bullets

“There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.”
-- O. Henry

#Thanksgiving #Home #Self

“There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.”
-- O. Henry

#Littles #Couches #Howl

“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.”
-- O. Henry

#San Francisco #Race #People

“It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.”
-- O. Henry

#New York #Littles

“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.”
-- O. Henry

#Real #Writing #Thinking

“She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).”
-- O. Henry

#Invisible #Ownership

“Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.”
-- O. Henry

#Communication #Conversation #Dough

“This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.”
-- O. Henry

#Spring #Cities #Soul

“What else can you expect from a town thats shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?”
-- O. Henry

#Ocean #Towns #Sides

“To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.”
-- O. Henry

#Men #Impossible #Worship

“In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in its greatness.”
-- O. Henry

#New York #Greatness #Gentleman

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

#Dog #Communication #Animal

“But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but makes laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make laws to repeal aforesaid laws.”
-- O. Henry

#Home #Men #Light

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

#Life #Men #Sides

“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.”
-- O. Henry

#Country #Moving #Trying

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

#Way #Turns

“The magi, as you know, were wise men wonderfully wise men who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents.”
-- O. Henry

#Christmas #Wise #Art

“Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.”
-- O. Henry

#Silly #Flying #Pieces

“Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.”
-- O. Henry

#Art #Writing #Drawing

“Bolivar cannot carry double”
-- O. Henry