Top 100 Quotes About O Henry
#1. The author O. Henry taught me about the value of the unexpected. He once wrote about the noise of flowers and the smell of birds - the birds were chickens and the flowers dried sunflowers rattling against a wall.
Chuck Jones
#2. Where Norman Rockwell is the Artist for the man on the street, O'Henry is his author.
Sonia Rumzi
#3. The leading lady had a large and saving sense of humor. But there is nothing that blunts the sense of humor more quickly than a few months of one-night stands. Even O. Henry could have seen nothing funny about that room.
Edna Ferber
#4. I adapted an O. Henry short story called 'By Courier,' which got nominated for a Best Short Subject Oscar.
Peter Riegert
#5. Before World War II, I was living a very cloistered existence, as most cartoonists do. The work I was pouring out did not come from any real, personal life experience; this was all the residue of the accumulation of Rafael Sabatini, O. Henry, all the short-story writers that I'd been reading.
Will Eisner
#6. The O. Henry has become lingua franca among writers for saying, 'That guy can write a story.' It's prestigious, respected, coveted, dreamed about. It's very satisfying to be included in this group of writers. Here's a koan: Could O. Henry win an O. Henry?
Tony D'Souza
#7. I see the game now. You can't write with ink, and you can't write with your own heart's blood, but you can write with the heart's blood of some one else. You have to be a cad before you can be an artist.
O'Henry 'The Plutonian Fire' (1905)
O. Henry
#8. My life is like an O Henry story ... the funniest girl in the world and the boy who never laughs.
Rainbow Rowell
#9. Reading fiction - excerpts from National Book Award finalists, winners of the Pen/O. Henry Prize for short stories, or even Amazon bestsellers - has been shown to enhance theory of mind:
Margaret Heffernan
#10. What the young writer is looking for is not a critic who will slap him on the back and say, 'Greatest thing since O. Henry,' but rather the one who will toss the manuscript down in disgust, with 'You know better than that! It's rotten! Do it all over again!'
Henry Sydnor Harrison
#11. Future historians trying to determine what it was like to be alive in fin de millennium America should read the last two decades of O. Henry and Best American short-story collections.
Gary Krist
#12. I've been religiously reading the O. Henry Prize anthologies every year since college, when I first began trying to write stories. Many of the authors whose work I cherish the most were people I first learned about through The O. Henry Prize Stories - and then I'd go search for their books.
Molly Antopol
#13. The first story I wrote was "Catface" which was later selected for The O. Henry Collection, so that gave me some confidence to try some more. Gathering these stories together was fun, but I realized when I read them that I have certain mental preoccupations and they keep recurring in my stories.
Arthur Bradford
#14. At six o'clok the young King's terrible sufferings finally ended. After his eyes had closed for the last time, the tempeste raged on. Later, superstitious folk claimed that Henry himself had sent it, and had risen from his grave in anger at the subversion of his will.
Alison Weir
#15. Burn, O evening hearth, and waken Pleasant visions, as of old! Though the house by winds be shaken, Safe I keep this room of gold!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#16. Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.
O. Henry
#17. Sail forth into the sea of life, O gentle, loving, trusting wife, And safe from all adversity Upon the bosom of that sea Thy comings and thy goings be! For gentleness and love and trust Prevail o'er angry wave and gust; And in the wreck of noble lives Something immortal still survives.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#18. When as a child I laughed and wept, time crept. When as a youth I waxed more bold, time strolled. When I became a full-grown man, time RAN. When older still I daily grew, time FLEW. Soon I shall find, in passing on, time gone. O Christ! wilt Thou have saved me then? Amen.
Henry Twells
#19. And most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another, being oft associated, until not even obituary notices them do part.
O. Henry
#20. Could Henry Ford produce the Book of Kells? Certainly not. He would quarrel initially with the advisability of such a project and then prove it was impossible.
Flann O'Brien
#21. I'm in the infantry. What you just showed me, for us that's not even good pornography.
Henry V. O'Neil
#22. Turn up the lights - I don't want to go home in the dark.
O. Henry
#23. It brings up happy old days when I was only a farmer and not an agriculturist.
O. Henry
#24. It was you, you who brought me the pardon. Pee on me, won't you. It would be like benediction. O, what a sleepwalker I have been!
Henry Miller
#25. That's it. Keep that edge. Fight like there's no tomorrow.
Henry V. O'Neil
#26. If there was ever an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptouwn on the Hudson called New York
O. Henry
#27. Greenwich Village ... the village of low rents and high arts.
O. Henry
#28. Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!
O. Henry
#29. 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.
O. Henry
#30. She was a good Christian woman with a large respect for religion, though she did not, of course, believe any of it was true.
Flannery O'Connor
#31. How long you been in the infantry, sir? Anything under ten miles counts as 'almost there'.
Henry V. O'Neil
#32. 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.
O. Henry
#33. For, even the preachers have begun to tell us that God is radium, or ether or some scientific compound, and that the worst we wicked ones may expect is a chemical reaction.
O. Henry
#34. O summer day beside the joyous sea!
O summer day so wonderful and white,
So full of gladness and so full of pain!
Forever and forever shalt thou be
To some the gravestone of a dead delight,
To some the landmark of a new domain.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#35. 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
#36. For me, college wasn't a breeze. I had 8 o'clock classes, I worked from 3 to 11 at the Settlement House. On weekends, if Northwestern Bell needed me, I'd troubleshoot for them, and I had a steady girl. God!
Henry Fonda
#37. No friendship is an accident.
O. Henry
#38. Remember what they did to Broadleaf, and remember what they did to us. Now it's time for us to kill 'em back.
Henry V. O'Neil
#40. O flower-de-luce, bloom on, and let the river Linger to kiss thy feet! O flower of song, bloom on, and make forever The world more fair and sweet.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#41. The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.
O. Henry
#42. I'd like to talk to Sean Hannity in a controlled environment and say, 'O.K., you can't interrupt and jump up and down like a professional wrestler.'
Henry Rollins
#43. Twenty-five years ago the school children used to chant their lessons. The manner of their delivery was a singsong recitative between the utterance of an Episcopal minister and the drone of a tired sawmill. I mean no disrespect. We must have lumber and sawdust.
O. Henry
#44. It's an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.
O. Henry
#45. 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
#46. 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
#47. Some of the things that beat the shit out of you ... can beat the bullshit out of you too.
Henry V. O'Neil
#48. 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.
O. Henry
#49. Search me, O God, and know my heart; test me and know my anxious thoughts. See if there is any offensive way in me, and lead me in the way everlasting.
Henry Cloud
#50. I've got a knife and I want to talk to you
I've got a prayer and I want to carve it to you
I've got no chance, that's why I'm looking to you
O Lord, ride with me
Henry Rollins
#51. O lovely eyes of azure, Clear as the waters of a brook that run Limpid and laughing in the summer sun!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#52. When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.
O. Henry
#53. It's a lot cleaner when Command kills you on purpose ... than when they do it by accident.
Henry V. O'Neil
#54. Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling - something
O. Henry
#55. He'd always been willing to confess his faults, for, by admitting them, it was as if he made them no longer exist.
Truman Capote
#56. Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.
O. Henry
#57. Good units walk a thin line between indiscipline and ineffectiveness. Ignore the rules too often and you've got a mob, but enforce the rules too strictly and you've got a herd.
Henry V. O'Neil
#58. Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
O. Henry
#59. Twenty dollars a week doesn't go far.
O. Henry
#60. From five o'clock to eight is on certain occasions a little eternity; but on such an occasion as this the interval could be only an eternity of pleasure.
Henry James
#61. O gift of God! O perfect day: Whereon shall no man work, but play; Whereon it is enough for me, Not to be doing, but to be!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#62. 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
O. Henry
#63. The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.
O. Henry
#64. History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
O. Henry
#66. In front the sea was spread, a smiling jailer, but even more incorruptible than the frowning mountains.
O. Henry
#67. I should like to be a periwinkle," said he, mysteriously, "on the top of a valley, and sing tooralloo-ralloo."
This was clearly too obscure, so I turned again to Coglan.
O. Henry
#68. Humans were denied the speech of animals. The only common ground of communication upon which dogs and men can get together is in fiction.
O. Henry
#69. O little souls! as pure as white And crystalline as rays of light Direct from heaven, their source divine; Refracted through the mist of years, How red my setting sun appears, How lurid looks this soul of mine!
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#70. It did not exactly beggar description, but it certainly had that word on the lookout for the mendicancy squad.
O. Henry
#71. I played with fire, did counsel spurn, Made life my common stake; But never thought that fire would burn, O that a soul could ache.
Henry Vaughan
#72. O loving wisdom of our God
when all was sin and shame,
a second Adam to the fight
and to the rescue came.
John Henry Newman
#73. A wise friend told me that we all could use more than one set of parents - our relations with the original set are too intense, and need dissipating.
Alice Adams
#74. Ah, yes, the sea is still and deep, All things within its bosom sleep! A single step, and all is o'er, A plunge, a bubble, and no more.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#75. O that these folding arms might ne'er undo!
Henry Petowe
#76. There rises the moon, broad and tranquil, through the branches of a walnut tree on a hill opposite. I apostrophize it in the words of Faust; "O gentle moon, that lookest for the last time upon my agonies!"
or something to that effect.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#77. In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called "places.
O. Henry
#78. I wrote at the start that this was a record of hate, and walking there beside Henry towards the evening glass of beer, I found the one prayer that seemed to serve the winter mood: O God, You've done enough, You've robbed me of enough, I'm too tired and old to learn to love, leave me alone forever.
Graham Greene
#79. See yonder fire! It is the moon slow rising o'er the eastern hill. It glimmers on the forest tips, and through the dewy foliage drips In little rivulets of light, and makes the heart in love with night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#80. O Lord God, we pray that we may be inspired to nobleness of life in the least things. May we dignify all our daily life. May we set such a sacredness upon every part of our life, that nothing shall be trivial, nothing unimportant, and nothing dull, in the daily round.
Henry Ward Beecher
#81. 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.
O. Henry
#82. She turned on me a flatteringly protracted but a wiltingly disapproving gaze, & then went inside, humming a light song to indicate the value she placed upon my existence.
O. Henry
#83. O, never from the memory of my heart
Your dear, paternal image shall depart,
Who while on earth, ere yet by death surprised,
Taught me how mortals are immortalized;
How grateful am I for that patient care
All my life long my language shall declare.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#84. O thou sculptor, painter, poet! Take this lesson to thy heart: That is best which lieth nearest; Shape from that thy work of art.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#85. If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they'd never marry.
O. Henry
#86. All these thoughts of love and strife
Glimmered through his lurid life,
As the stars' intenser light
Through the red flames o'er him trailing,
As his ships went sailing, sailing,
Northward in the summer night.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#87. You help us, they'll lock you up for the rest of your life.
Henry V. O'Neil
#88. The emigrant's way o'er the western desert is mark'd by
Camp-fires long consum'd and bones that bleach in the sunshine.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#89. By rights you're a king. If I was you, I'd call for a new deal.
O. Henry
#90. O Prince, our eyes contemplate with admiration and transmit to the soul the wonderful and varied spectacle of this universe. The night veils without doubt a part of this glorious creation; but day comes to reveal to us this great work, which extends from earth even into the plains of the ether.
Henry David Thoreau
#91. Lieutenant Mortas is the black sheep of the family--I thought you knew that.
Henry V. O'Neil
#92. Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.
O. Henry
#93. Food's the killer. The clock starts as soon as the troops are on the ground. You wouldn't believe how fast they consume what they're carrying, and then ... if I don't get them more, if I don't find them more ... they die.
Henry V. O'Neil
#94. It is perhaps fortunate that Sylvia was oblivious to the commotion behind the scenes. Apparently, Henry O. Teltscher had written a letter to Betsy Talbot Blackwell, warning her that one of her guest editors was on the brink of a nervous breakdown.
Elizabeth Winder
#95. Whatever hath been written shall remain,
Nor be erased nor written o'er again;
The unwritten only still belongs to thee:
Take heed, and ponder well what that shall be.
Henry Wadsworth Longfellow
#96. She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
O. Henry
#97. Till the Japanese bombed Pearl Harbor, most American men wore hats to work. What happened? Did our guys - suddenly scouting overhead for worse Sunday raids - come to fear their hatbrims' interference?
Allan Gurganus
#98. But never mind; faint heart never won true Friend. O Friend, may it come to pass, once, that when you are my Friend I may be yours.
Henry David Thoreau
#99. He appeared every night, like myself, at about nine o'clock, in the office of Mr. Tyler, to learn the news brought in the night Associated Press report. He knew me from the Bull Run campaign as a correspondent of the press.
Henry Villard
#100. 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.
O. Henry
