Austin O'Malley Quotes

Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind.

Patience is the analogue of God's serenity.

Some folks never handle the truth without scratching it.

If you sit by the wayside waiting for Success, your knees will be too stiff to follow her when she passes.

The bigger the dam of patience, the worse the flood when the dam breaks.

Love is a boomerang that returns to the thrower's hand.

We use religion like a trolley-car--we ride on it only while it is going our way.

Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.

Show me a genuine case of platonic friendship, and I shall show you two old or homely faces.

A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.

Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.

The milk of human kindness should be brought fresh to the table every morning.

When a great life sets it leaves an afterglow on the sky far into the night.

Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.

The difference between a mongrel and a thoroughbred, whether brute or man, is not in swiftness, beauty, or endurance, but in courage.

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.

If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.

Memory is a crazy woman who hoards colored rags and throws away food.

Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers.

Knowledge is flour, but wisdom is bread.

An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards.

God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it.

A charitable man is like an apple tree-he gives his fruit and is silent; the philanthropist is like the successful hen.

No matter who you are, you will be put abed at last with a shovel.

Wisdom grows in quiet places.

Atheism is a disease of the mind caused by eating underdone philosophy

Cunning is a short blanket--if you pull it over your face, you expose your feet.

The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father.

Most reformers, like a pair of trousers on a windy clothesline, go through a vast deal of vehement motion, but stay in the same place.

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

Envy is a gun with a faulty breech-lock which flares back and burns the gunner.

Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope.

Sorrow may be a good thing for a woman's heart, but it is a poor cosmetic for her face.

The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.

Ugliness is a point of view; an ulcer is wonderful to a pathologist.

A rose gets its color and fragrance from the root, and man his virtue from his childhood.

A drunkard is like a whiskey-bottle, all neck and belly and no head.

An essential quality of beauty is aloofness.

The most evident quality of human life is its loneliness.

Moral progress is a process of isolation; the mountain tops are lonely.

All things come to him who waits - even justice.

A youth's knowledge is like a cheap shotgun-likely to do as much damage to the owner as to the game.

It is as easy to give advice to yourself as to others, and as useless.

In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.

Civilization sails prettily like a child's rubber balloon until it hits a sharp object; then it is likely to collapse like the balloon.

If the devil went about doing a tenth of what he is accused of doing he would be poor from paying the blacksmith for ox-shoes for his hooves.

If you combine all the spectral rays into a single beam, you get white light; and, if you combine all the virtues into a single beam, you get charity.

Patience is moral elasticity.

The perfection of art is to conceal the sources.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.