O. Henry Quotes

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

No friendship is an accident.

The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.

A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.

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

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

I'll give you the whole secret to short story writing. Here it is. Rule 1: Write stories that please yourself. There is no Rule 2.

If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life

Write what you like; there is no other rule.

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.

All great men have declared that they owe their sucess to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.

Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.

Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.

My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.

Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.

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

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.

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

All of us have to be prevaricators, hypocrites, and liars every day of our lives; otherwise the social structure would fall into pieces the first day. We must act in one another's presence just as we must wear clothes. It is for the best

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!

If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.

When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.

I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.

Those whom we first love we seldom marry