O. Henry Quotes

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Love and scandal are the best sweeteners of tea.

The new illiteracy is about more than not knowing how to read the book or the word; it is about not knowing how to read the world.

We sleep, but the loom of life never stops, and the pattern which was weaving when the sun went down is weaving when it comes up in the morning.

Books minister to our knowledge, to our guidance, and to our delight, by their truth, their uprightness, and their art.

All self-effort is but sinking sand. Christ alone is the Rock of our salvation.

We never know the love of the parent for the child till we become parents.

Winter giveth the fields, and the trees so old, their beards of icicles and snow.

Feeling is deep and still; and the word that floats on the surface Is as the tossing buoy, that betrays where the anchor is hidden.

Success is not something to wait for, it is something to work for.

For those who love... time is eternity.

As if you could kill time without injuring eternity.

Of all the properties which belong to honorable men, not one is so highly prized as that of character.

Courtesies of a small and trivial character are the ones which strike deepest in the grateful and appreciating heart.

God doesn't want people to do what they think is best: he wants them to do what he knows is best, and no amount of reasoning and intellectualizing will discover that.

Today the traveller on the Nile enters a wonderland at whose gates rise the colossal pyramids of which he has had visions perhaps from earliest childhood.

Prayer is designed to adjust you to God's will, not to adjust God to your will.

It's easier to go down a hill than up it but the view is much better at the top.

But men labor under a mistake. The better part of the man is soon plowed into the soil for compost.

Live daringly, boldly, fearlessly. Taste the relish to be found in competition - in having put forth the best within you.

[Our Constitution] is an instrument for the people to restrain the government.

If we will be quiet and ready enough, we shall find compensation in every disappointment.

Any man who thinks he can be happy and prosperous by letting the government take care of him better take a closer look at the American Indian.

either you take in believing in miracles or you stand still like the hummingbird.

Management and leadership are not separate spheres. The two skills work together in the larger realm of “communityship.

Strength is the product of struggle, you must do what others don't to achieve what others won't.

Auto racing began 5 minutes after the second car was built.

The more reverence we have for the Word of God, the more joy we shall find in it.

Think for yourself, or others will think for you without thinking of you.

The secret of success is to understand the viewpoint of others.

What is the use of a house if you haven't got a tolerable planet to put it on?

There is a burden of care in getting riches; fear in keeping them; temptation in using them; guilt in abusing them; sorrow in losing them; and a burden of account at last to be given concerning them.

An idealist is a person who helps other people to be prosperous.

Resistance! Resistance! No oppressed people have ever secured their liberty without resistance!

Wouldn't it be a tragedy to get to the top of the ladder and find you placed it against the wrong wall?

God does not comfort us to make us comfortable, but to make us comforters.

There is too much at stake for us to surrender to the politics of polarization.

The soul grows by subtraction, not addition.

Companies are communities. Theres a spirit of working together. Communities are not a place where a few people allow themselves to be singled out as solely responsible for success.

I know of no more encouraging fact than the unquestionable ability of man to elevate his life by conscious endeavor.

No attribute of God is more dreadful to sinners than His holiness.

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

God made man to go by motives, and he will not go without them, any more than a boat without steam or a balloon without gas.

The language of friendship is not words but meanings.

In the sacred precinct of that dwelling where the despotic woman wields the sceptre of fierce neatness, one treads as if he carried his life in his hands.

Control oil and you control nations; control food and you control the people.

The sad thing is that many of us come to Christ because we are sinners, and then spend the rest of our lives trying to pretend that we are not!

If you think of standardization as the best that you know today, but which is to be improved tomorrow; you get somewhere.

One friend in a life-time is much; two are many; three are hardly possible. Friendship needs a certain parallelism of life, a community of thought, a rivalry of aim.

Nature paints not; In oils, but frescoes the great dome of heaven; With sunsets, and the lovely forms of clouds; And flying vapors.