O. Henry Quotes

To weep is to make less the depth of grief.

To have done anything just for money is to have been truly idle.

The worst thing in this world, next to anarchy, is government.

The lawyer's truth is not Truth, but consistency or a consistent expediency.

The head learns new things, but the heart forever practices old experiences.

I am a veteran of the War on Christmas. I am just emerging from a battlefield strewn with dead trees and torn shreds of brightly colored wrapping paper.

Capital punishment is as fundamentally wrong as a cure for crime as charity is wrong as a cure for poverty.

Ah, how good it feels! The hand of an old friend.

A leader does not deserve the name unless he is willing occasionally to stand alone.

The only way to make a man trustworthy is to trust him.

There is no grief like the grief that does not speak.

Art is man's expression of his joy in labor.

Youth comes but once in a lifetime.

All vital praying makes a drain on a man's vitality. True intercession is a sacrifice, a bleeding sacrifice.

May my life be like a great hospitable tree, and may weary wanderers find in me a rest.

...Prayer is not always petition, sometimes it is just communion. It is the exquisite ministry of friendship.

Slavery can never be abolished.

The unthankful heart... discovers no mercies; but let the thankful heart sweep through the day and, as the magnet finds the iron, so it will find, in every hour, some heavenly blessings!

There is a power in the human mind ... to see things as they are ... but there is equally a power to see things as they might be.

Morality without religion is only a kind of dead reckoning - an endeavor to find our place on a cloudy sea by measuring the distance we have run, but without any observation of the heavenly bodies.

I am the Angel of the Sun Whose flaming wheels began to run When God's almighty breath Said to the darkness and the Night, Let there be light! and there was light.

The first day of spring is one thing, and the first spring day is another. The difference between them is sometimes as great as a month.

A work can have in it a pent-up energy, an intense life of its own, independent of the subject it may represent.

Sculpture is an art of the open air... I would rather have a piece of my sculpture put in a landscape, almost any landscape, than in, or on, the most beautiful building I know.

The ancient codes were doubtless originally suggested by the discovery and diffusion of the art of writing.

At the age of 12 my ambition was to become a gangster. To be a wiseguy. Being a wiseguy was better than being President of the United States. To be a wiseguy was to own the world.

The envious are more likely to be mollified by seeing others deprived of some advantage than by gaining it for themselves. It is not what they lack that chiefly troubles them, but what others have.

Don't expect people to respect you for what you are "planning" to do.

The hounds all join in glorious cry, / The huntsman winds his horn: / And a-hunting we will go.

We are for the most part more lonely when we go abroad among men than when we stay in our chambers.

Did ever a man try heroism, magnanimity, truth, sincerity, and find that there was no advantage in them - that it was a vain endeavor?

We must learn to reawaken and keep ourselves awake, not by mechanical aid, but by an infinite expectation of the dawn.

There is no beginning too small.

Spouses in healthy relationships cherish each other's space and are champions of each other's causes.

Faith goes beyond reason. It goes beyond what you can see. But it is as real as anything you can touch or feel.

I just loved the coolness of [Sean] Connery's Bond. He just sort of oozes cool.

People say, "Age is just a number." A lot of times it's not just a number. It's actually a real and true sign of someone's maturity. But in this case, she's fantastic.

You cannot go with God and stay where you are.

Touch the earth, love the earth, honour the earth, her plains, her valleys, her hills, and her seas; rest your spirit in her solitary places.

In the end, peace can be achieved only by hegemony or by balance of power.

It is only through raising expectations and striving for excellence that our children can reach their full potential.

Blushing is the colour of virtue.

Are we at last brought to such an humiliating and debasing degradation, that we cannot be trusted with arms for our defense?

The moment I've got a ball at my feet, I'm happy.

These people were well dressed in skins, had some guns, but armed generally with bows and arrows and such other instruments of war as are common among the Indians of the Missouri.

The plea of necessity, that eternal argument of all conspirators.

The public be damned. I am working for my stockholders.

Men are born to succeed, not to fail.

Speculation is only a word covering the making of money out of the manipulation of prices, instead of supplying goods and services.

Sometimes the truth hurts. And sometimes it feels real good.