O. Henry Quotes

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far.

Will you buy my hair?

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

One dollar and eighty-seven cents.

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

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

Jimmy Valentine looked into her eyes, forgetting at once what he was. He became another man.

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

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

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.

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

He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.

Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.

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

He had become enveloped in the Indian Summer of the Soul.

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

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

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

In front the sea was spread, a smiling jailer, but even more incorruptible than the frowning mountains.

It shall be a duty and a pleasing sport to wander with Momus beneath the tropic stars where Melpomene once stalked austere.

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

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

Knowledge is a strong stream of water turned on us through a hose. It disturbs our roots

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.

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

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

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

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

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

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

If there was ever an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptouwn on the Hudson called New York

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.

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

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

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

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

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

It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.

Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.

Those whom we first love we seldom marry

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

There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.

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

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

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

Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - something

What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.

In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places.

Pull up the shades so I can see New York. I don't want to go home in the dark.

Maybe the hairs on my head were numbered" she went on with a sudden serious sweetness "but nobody could ever count my love for you".

Bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.

Love and large-hearted giving, when added together, can leave deep marks.It is never easy to cover these marks, dear friends - never easy.

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

Bolivar cannot carry double

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

It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.

No friendship is an accident.

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

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

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

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

Pennies saved one and two at a time

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

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

Well, little old Noisyville-on-the Subway is good enough for me.

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

I hate it as one hates sin or pestilence or
the color work in a ten-cent magazine.

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

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

He studied cities as women study their reflections.