O. Henry Quotes

People are best on records and books because you can turn them off or put them back on the shelf.

All great discoveries are made by men whose feelings run ahead of their thinking.

If you have never read the Protocols, you know nothing about the Jewish question.

Their racial characteristics are such that we cannot understand or trust even the citizen Japanese.

It is only those who do not know how to work that do not love it. To those who do, it is better than play.

Real knowledge never promoted either turbulence or unbelief; but its progress is the forerunner of liberality and enlightened toleration.

Government planning always involves compulsion.

I had rather be right than be President.

I believe that when the body is strong, the mind thinks strong thoughts.

Before you try to convince anyone else, be sure you are convinced, and if you cannot convince yourself, drop the subject.

There is nothing like the first hot days of spring when the gardener stops wondering if it's too soon to plant the dahlias and starts wondering if it's too late.

Multiculturalism means your kid has to learn some wretched tribal dirge for the school holiday concert instead of getting to sing 'Rudolph the Red-Nosed Reindeer.'

Half the wrong conclusions at which mankind arrive are reached by the abuse of metaphors, and by mistaking general resemblance or imaginary similarity for real identity.

Pure mathematics, may it never be of any use to anyone.

Monotheism is but imperialism in religion.

Heart power is better than horsepower.

The more things a government undertakes to do, the fewer things it can do completely. When the government tries to do everything it must do everything badly.

Rather a man with 50 per cent ability and 100 per cent character than a man with 100 per cent ability and 50 per cent character.

Inflation is not only unnecessary for economic growth. As long as it exists it is the enemy of economic growth.

Nothing raises the price of a blessing like its removal; whereas, it was its continuance which should have taught us its value. [It is wise to be grateful of what we have while we have it.]

When primitive law has once been embodied in a Code, there is an end to what may be called its spontaneous development.

Translation is at best an echo.

Show me a man who claims he is objective and I'll show you a man with illusions.

Not much longer shall we have time for reading lessons of the past. An inexorable present calls us to the defense of a great future.

Writing is not primarily escape, but use.

You leave space for the body, imagining the other part even though it isn't there.

I think I don't regret a single 'excess' of my responsive youth - I only regret, in my chilled age, certain occasions and possibilities I didn't embrace.

Faith without thankfulness lacks strength and fortitude.

It's easier to teach a poet how to read a balance sheet than it is to teach an accountant how to write.

I sometimes draw just for its own enjoyment.

Things are always different from what they might be.

Don't pass it by - the immediate, the real, the ours, the yours, the novelist's that it waits for.

It is no wonder he wins every game. He has never done a thing in his life exept play games

Birth into this life was the death of the embryo life that preceded; and the death of this will be birth into some new mode of being.

Failure is Central to engineering. Every single calculation that an engineer makes is a failure calculation.

A tradition is kept alive only by something being added to it.

By a garden is meant mystically a place of spiritual repose, stillness, peace, refreshment, delight.

Doctor Livingstone, I presume?

A good man is willing to know the worst of himself, and particularly under affliction, desires to be told wherefore God contends with him and what God designs in correcting him.

They that pray in the family do well; they that pray and read the Scriptures do better; but they that pray, and read, and sing do best of all.

Those who have a heart to do good, never need complain for want of opportunity.

So great was the extremity of his pain and anguish, that he did not only sigh but roar.

Human nature will never part with power. Look for an example of a voluntary relinquishment of power from one end of the globe to another - you will find none.

There is a just God who presides over the destinies of nations, and who will raise up friends to fight our battles for us.

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

Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.

O sin, what hast thou done to this fair earth!

My life is like the summer rose That opens to the morning sky, But ere the shades of evening close Is scattered on the ground - to die.

The most basic law of economics?that one cannot get something for nothing.

I eat football, I sleep football. I am not mad I am just passionate