O. Henry
If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.Collection: Alone
There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.Collection: Thanksgiving
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.Collection: Environmental
Turn up the lights. I don't want to go home in the dark.Collection: Funny
Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!Collection: Patriotism
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.Collection: Life
The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.
When one loves one's Art no service seems too hard.
It'll be a great place if they ever finish it.
The people of the State of Texas consist principally of men, women, and children, with a sprinkling of cowboys. The weather is very good, thermometer rarely rising above 2,500 degrees in the shade and hardly ever below 212.
It is said that love makes the world go 'round - the announcement lacks verification. It's wind from the dinner horn that does it.
Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
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.
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
Whenever he saw a dollar in another man's hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn't take it any other way.
The Venturer is one who keeps his eye on the hedgerows and wayside groves and meadows while he travels the road to Fortune.
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.
I never have time to read now. I did all my reading before I was twenty.
She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
It couldn't have happened anywhere but in little old New York.
By rights you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal.
It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an agriculturist.
By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
Write what you like; there is no other rule.
I have been called 'The American De Maupassant.' Well, I never wrote a filthy word in my life, and I don't like to be compared to a filthy writer.
It ain't the roads we take; it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.Collection: Way
No friendship is an accident.Collection: Friendship
A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.Collection: Sugar Coating
We can't buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.Collection: People
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.Collection: Writing
If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full lifeCollection: War
Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.Collection: Adventure
Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.Collection: Country
Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.Collection: Wonderful
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.Collection: Sweet
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.Collection: Bravery
The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.Collection: Journey
All great men have declared that they owe their sucess to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.Collection: Encouragement
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.Collection: Appreciation
If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.Collection: Writing
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 bestCollection: Liars
I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.Collection: Writing
I wanted to paint a picture some day that people would stand before and forget that it was made of paint. I wanted it to creep into them like a bar of music and mushroom there like a soft bullet.Collection: Mushrooms
To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.Collection: Men
Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides.Collection: Life
Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.Collection: Art
I'll give you the sole secret of short-story writing, and here it is: Rule 1. Write stories that please yourself. There is no rule 2. The technical points you can get from Bliss Perry. If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.Collection: Writing
Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.Collection: Silly
It's said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it.Collection: Wind
This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.Collection: Spring