O. Henry Quotes

The tragedy of it is that nobody sees the look of desperation on my face. Thousands and thousands of us, and we're passing one another without a look of recognition.

He was there or was not there: not there if I didn't see him.

To read between the lines was easier than to follow the text.

I have made a silent compact with myself not to change a line of what I write. I am not interested in perfecting my thoughts, nor my actions.

To a small man every greater is an exaggeration.

Develop an Interest in Life as you see it.

We are all part of creation, all kings, all poets, all musicians; we have only to open up, only to discover what is already there.

Oxford lends sweetness to labour and dignity to leisure.

I'd rather sit down and write a letter than call someone up. I hate the telephone.

An Englishman's never so natural as when he's holding his tongue.

Yellow Face marks my summation of multiculturalism.

Example moves the world more than doctrine. The great exemplars are the poets of action, and it makes little difference whether they be forces for good or forces for evil.

We work in the dark -- we do what we can -- we give what we have.

Sin, guilt, neurosis; they are one and the same, the fruit of the tree of knowledge.

In art economy is always beauty.

Most men cry better than they speak. You get more nurture out of them by pinching than addressing them.

He is the same old sausage, fizzing and sputtering in his own grease.

I am incapable of telling you not to feel. Feel, feel, I say - feel for all you're worth, and even if it half kills you, for that is the only way to live.

. . . I was rich, if not in money, in sunny hours and summer days. . . .

I know of no substitute whatever for the force and beauty of an artistic process.

Love has nothing to do with good reasons.

Try claiming God's blessings instead of merely longing for them.

Direct your eye inward, and you'll find / A thousand regions in your mind / Yet undiscovered. Travel them, and be / Expert in home-cosmography

Most men I do not meet at all, for they seem not to have time; they are busy about their beans.

When you know what men are capable of you marvel neither at their sublimity nor their baseness. There are no limits in either direction apparently.

When one is trying to do something beyond his known powers it is useless to seek the approval of friends. Friends are at their best in moments of defeat.

Instead of asking 'How much damage will the work in question bring about?' why not ask 'How much good? How much joy?'

Books are to be distinguished by the grandeur of their topics even more than by the manner in which they are treated.

Data don't generate theory - only researchers do that.

Compared to gardeners, I think it is generally agreed that others understand very little about anything of consequence.

Turn down the noise. Reduce the speed. Be like the somnolent bears, or those other animals that slow down and almost die in the cold season. Let it be the way it is. The magic is there in its power.

The dreamer is a madman quiescent, the madman is a dreamer in action.

Don't let a week go by without conferences with each player, you can't teach it all on the floor.

God has ordered, that men, being in need of each other, should learn to love each other, and to bear each other's burdens.

A woman's character is as delicate as her eye; it can bear no flaw.

Suffice it to say Cherie Snodgrass and I were good friends a long, long time ago. After Mr Snodgrass confronted my wife, the friendship ended and my marriage remained intact.

We are going to follow wherever the facts lead us.

They were pleasant spring days, in which the winter of man's discontent was thawing as well as the earth, and the life that had lain torpid began to stretch itself.

To a zealot every one of his own sect is a saint, while the most upright of a different sect are to him children of perdition.

Men are guided less by conscience than by glory; and yet the shortest way to glory is to be guided by conscience.

What your soul needs is a check up.

God's children have a limitless supply of the fruit of the Spirit.

If you must commit suicide ... always contrive to do it as decorously as possible; the decencies, whether of life or of death, should never be lost sight of.

There are no countries in the world less known by the British than those selfsame British Islands.

I am all for titillating trivialities. I am all for the epic touch. I could almost say that everything in Time, should be either titillating or epic or starkly, supercurtly factual.

Dreams have always expanded our understanding of reality by challenging our boundaries of the real, of the possible.

I'm constantly around people that talk a lot but say nothing. A sad case.

That grand old poem called Winter

The times I have tried to get close to someone resulted in me feeling threatened and weak.

I believe that one defines oneself by reinvention.