O. Henry Quotes

Photography was the first available demonstration that light could indeed exert an action sufficient to cause changes in material bodies.

Be a hard master to yourself - and be lenient to everybody else.

Try to be one of the people on whom nothing is lost!

Never say you know the last word about any human heart.

Strategic air assault is wasted if it is dissipated piecemeal in sporadic attacks between which the enemy has an opportunity to readjust defenses or recuperate.

There are only two reasons to sit in the back row of an airplane: Either you have diarrhea, or you're anxious to meet people who do.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm.

The soul without imagination is what an observatory would be without a telescope.

It is not the going out of port, but the coming in, that determines the success of a voyage.

It is, after all, the responsibility of the expert to operate the familiar and that of the leader to transcend it.

I want to make my contribution to humanity so that there will be no more Auschwitzes. Children who are born wanted and are given love and attention will not build concentration camps.

If lips and life do not agree, the testimony will not amount to much.

Creative ideas are often attacked because people oppose change or do not understand new concepts.

Great truths that are stumbling blocks to the natural man are nevertheless the very foundations upon which the confidence of the spiritual man is built.

She feels in italics and thinks in CAPITALS.

That which is unjust can really profit no one; that which is just can really harm no one.

I do not claim to have perfected an art but to have commenced one, the limits of which it is not possible at present exactly to ascertain.

Any fool can make a rule, and any fool will mind it.

Enthusiasm is the sparkle in your eyes, the swing in your gait.

Anyone who does anything useful will not go unpaid.

Give what you have. To some one, it may be better than you dare to think.

I hear the wind among the trees Playing the celestial symphonies; I see the branches downward bent, Like keys of some great instrument.

It is difficult to know at what moment love begins; it is less difficult to know that it has begun.

Let me burn out for God. After all, whatever God may appoint, prayer is the great thing. Oh, that I might be a man of prayer!

I come to my solitary woodland walk as the homesick go home. I thus dispose of the superfluous and see things as they are, grand and beautiful.

The West of which I speak is but another name for the Wild, and what I have been preparing to say is, that in Wildness is the preservation of the World

Hard words indeed break no bones, but many a heart has been broken by them.

Dreams are the touchstones of our character.

You say I started out with practically nothing, but that isn't correct. We all start with all there is, it's how we use it that makes things possible.

Sunday is the golden clasp that binds together the volume of the week.

The heights by great men reached and kept were not attained by sudden flight, but they, while their companions slept, were toiling upward in the night.

They know enough who know how to learn.

There is a loftier ambition than merely to stand high in the world. It is to stoop down and lift mankind a little higher.

I hate men who are afraid of women's strength.

The conventional army loses if it does not win. The guerrilla wins if he does not lose.

The American President resembles the commander of a ship at sea. He must have a helm to grasp, a course to steer, a port to seek.

Morning glory is the best name, it always refreshes me to see it.

The Japanese position was hopeless even before the first atomic bomb fell because the Japanese had lost control of their own air.

Duffers who consistently shank their balls are urged to buy and study Shanks - No Thanks by R.K. Hoffman, or in extreme cases, M.S. Howard's excellent Tennis for Beginners.

The basically simple things are best, whether it's automobiles or diets or philosophy.

Stopping advertising to save money is like stopping your watch to save time.

Old men are always advising young men to save money. That is bad advice. Don't save every nickel. Invest in yourself. I never saved a dollar until I was forty years old.

An Airplane takes off against the wind, not with it.

The sun does not shine for a few trees and flowers, but for the wide world's joy.

You can do anything if you have enthusiasm.

If you need a machine and don't buy it, then you will ultimately find that you have paid for it and don't have it.

He who walks alone, waits for no-one.

Those who teach by their doctrine must teach by their life, or else they pull down with one hand what they build up with the other.

The human voice is the organ of the soul.

The power of gentleness is irresistible.