O. Henry
There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.Collection: Life
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.Collection: Littles
The most notable thing about Time is that it is so purely relative. A large amount of reminiscence is, by common consent, conceded to the drowning man; and it is not past belief that one may review an entire courtship while removing one's gloves.Collection: Past
He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.Collection: Sunshine
In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out.Collection: Men
If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.Collection: Marriage
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.Collection: Bores You
If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what they sing.Collection: New York
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.Collection: Art
But how is it now? All we get is orders; and the laws go out of the state. Them legislators set up there at Austin and don't do nothing but makes laws against kerosene oil and schoolbooks being brought into the state. I reckon they was afraid some man would go home some evening after work and light up and get an education and go to work and make laws to repeal aforesaid laws.Collection: Home
In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness, he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in its greatness.Collection: New York
History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.Collection: Men
[A]ll of life, as we know it, moves in little, unavailing circles. More justly than to anything else, it can be likened to the game of baseball. Crack! we hit the ball, and away we go. If we earn a run (in life we call it success) we get back to the home plate and sit upon a bench. If we are thrown out, we walk back to the home plate -- and sit upon a bench.Collection: Baseball
There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.Collection: Thanksgiving
What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?Collection: Moving
Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.Collection: Real
There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavour of life until he has known poverty, love and war. The justness of this reflection commends it to the lover of condensed philosophy. The three conditions embrace about all there is in life worth knowing. A surface thinker might deem that wealth should be added to the list. Not so. When a poor man finds a long-hidden quarter-dollar that has slipped through a rip into his vest lining, he sounds the pleasure of life with a deeper plummet than any millionaire can hope to cast.Collection: Philosophy
There is no well defined boundary line between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in the one domain and sometimes in the other.Collection: Truth
Beauty is Nature in perfection; circularity is its chief attribute. Behold the full moon, the enchanting golf ball, the domes of splendid temples, the huckleberry pie, the wedding ring, the circus ring, the ring for the waiter, and the "round" of drinks.Collection: Golf
If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another's.Collection: Luxury
When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.Collection: Men
Women's weapon, water-drops.Collection: Water
Those whom we first love we seldom marryCollection: First Love
Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr's.Collection: Perfect
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.Collection: Life
It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.Collection: Beautiful
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.Collection: Men
It gives men courage and ambition and the nerve for anything. It has the colour of gold, is clear as a glass and shines after dark as if the sunshine were still in it.Collection: Food
Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.Collection: Dog
She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.Collection: Air
But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat--the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions--ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable--the mutual help and inspiration; and--overlook my artlessness--stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m.Collection: Inspiration
A holiday in a new dresscan earth offer anything more enchanting?Collection: Holiday
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.Collection: Christmas
What else can you expect from a town thats shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?Collection: Ocean
Now, girls, if you want to observe a young man hustle out after a pick and shovel, just tell him that your heart is in some other fellow's grave. Young men are grave-robbers by nature.Collection: Love
He studied cities as women study their reflections.Collection: Reflection
Be always decent and right in your home town; and when you're on the road, never take more than four glasses of beer a day or play higher than a twenty-five-cent limit.Collection: Home
There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age; youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares; old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.Collection: Grief
Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.Collection: Dust
Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.Collection: Art
Bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.Collection: Eye
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.Collection: Fog
If there was ever an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptouwn on the Hudson called New YorkCollection: New York
East is East, and West is San FranciscoCollection: San Francisco
You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get a chance to learn. Every thing's too compressed. Even the hayseeds are bailed hayseeds. But what else can you expect from a town that's shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?Collection: Wise
Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.Collection: Rude
Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.Collection: Medicine
When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster...I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That's the story.Collection: Faces
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.Collection: New York