O. Henry

North Carolina · born or raised1862–1910

American short story writer (1862–1910)

Born in Greensboro

writer, journalist, short story writer

Quotations with a citation

Take it from me — he's got the goods.

What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?

Not very long ago some one invented the assertion that there were only "Four Hundred" people in New York City who were really worth noticing. But a wiser man has arisen — the census taker — and his larger estimate of human interest has been preferred in marking out the field of these little stories of the "Four Million."

One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.

There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl. So Della did it. Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

The magi, as you know, were wise men — wonderfully wise men — who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal Son—when he started back home.

Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's.

Turn up the lights — I don't want to go home in the dark.

Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.

The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.

Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.

There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.

In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches.

He wrote love stories, a thing I have always kept free from, holding the belief that the well-known and popular sentiment is not properly matter for publication, but something to be privately handled by the alienist and the florist.

I hated Kerner, and one day I met him and we became friends. He was young and gloriously melancholy because his spirits were so high and life had so much in store for him. Yes, he was almost riotously sad. That was his youth. When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.

Kerner's father was worth a couple of millions. He was willing to stand for art, but he drew the line at the factory girl. So Kerner disinherited his father and walked out to a cheap studio and lived on sausages for breakfast and on Farroni for dinner.

I know you. I have heard of you all my life. I know now what a scourge you have been to your country. Instead of killing fools you have been murdering the youth and genius that are necessary to make a people live and grow great. You are a fool yourself, Holmes; you began killing off the brightest and best of our countrymen three generations ago, when the old and obsolete standards of society and honor and orthodoxy were narrow and bigoted. You proved that when you put your murderous mark upon my friend Kerner — the wisest chap I ever knew in my life.

Broadway — the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.

It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

Busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wallpaper.

She is pale but affectionate, clinging to his arm — always clinging to his arm. Any one can see that she is a peach and of the cling variety.

If ever there was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, called New York.

History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.

You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a women's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

East is East, and West is San Francisco, according to Californians. Californians are a race of people; they are not merely inhabitants of a State.

Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle.

It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.

Man is too thoroughly an egoist not to be also an egotist; if he love, the object shall know it. During a lifetime he may conceal it through stress of expediency and honour, but it shall bubble from his dying lips, though it disrupt a neighbourhood. It is known, however, that most men do not wait so long to disclose their passion. In the case of Lorison, his particular ethics positively forbade him to declare his sentiments, but he must needs dally with the subject, and woo by innuendo at least.

Bolivar cannot carry double

It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.

A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.

In the libraries

Open Library Cabbages and Kings · 1904 View library record ↗ Open Library Options · 1909 View library record ↗ Open Library Roads of destiny · 1909 View library record ↗ Open Library Sixes and Sevens · 1911 View library record ↗ Open Library The Four Million · 1906 View library record ↗ Open Library The trimmed lamp, and other stories of the four million · 1907 View library record ↗

Read O. Henry

Roads of destiny 1909 Find a copy Cabbages and Kings 1904 Find a copy The trimmed lamp, and other stories of the four million 1907 Find a copy The Four Million 1906 Find a copy Sixes and Sevens 1911 Find a copy Options 1909 Find a copy