Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Famous Last Words, Last Words
She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Women, Men & Women, Men
A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Criminals, Crime
We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: One liners, Weather
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?
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Cities, City Life
Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Conversation
She would have made a splendid wife, for crying only made her eyes more bright and tender.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Sorrow
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.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Blessings, Appreciation, Gratitude, 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.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Old Age
There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Cheating, Deception/Lying
A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Voting
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Adversity
If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Men & Women, Men, Women
Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Poverty
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.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Bravery
There is no well-defined boundary 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 one domain and sometimes in the other.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Honesty
Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Life
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.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Wondering Whom to Read Next?
- Cynthia Ozick American Novelist, Essayist
- Edith Wharton American Novelist, Short-story Writer
- Andre Norton American Science Fiction Writer
- Mario Puzo American Novelist
- Billie Holiday American Jazz Singer
- Louis L’Amour American Novelist
- Owen Wister American Novelist
- Larry McMurtry American Novelist
- Don DeLillo American Author
- Sylvia Plath American Poet, Novelist
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