The Complete Works of O. Henry Quotes

“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.”
― O. Henry, The Complete Works of O. Henry

“Oh, I know what to do when I see victuals coming toward me in little old Bagdad-on-the-Subway. I strike the asphalt three times with my forehead and get ready to spiel yarns for my supper.”
― O. Henry, The Complete Works of O. Henry

“We still say ‘the apple of the eye’ when we wish to describe something superlatively precious.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Oh, come off your perch!" said the other man, who wore glasses. "Your premises won't come out in the wash. You wind-jammers who apply bandy-legged theories to concrete categorical syllogisms send logical conclusions skallybootin' into the infinitesimal ragbag. You can't pull my leg with an old sophism with whiskers on it.”
― O. Henry, The Complete Works of O. Henry

“But now he was little more than a whimpering oyster led to be devoured on the sands of a Southern sea by the artful walrus, Circumstance, and the implacable carpenter, Fate.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“That sounds self-indulgent and gratifying without vulgar ostentation,” says I; “and I don’t see how money could be better invested. Give me a cuckoo clock and a Sep Winner’s Self-Instructor for the Banjo, and I’ll join you.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Why, I've seen Kentuckians who hated whiskey, Virginians who weren't descended from Pocahontas, Indianians who hadn't written a novel, Mexicans who didn't wear velvet trousers with silver dollars sewed along the seams, funny Englishmen, spendthrift Yankees, cold-blooded Southerners, narrow- minded Westerners, and New Yorkers who were too busy to stop for an hour on the street to watch a one-armed grocer's clerk do up cranberries in paper bags. Let a man be a man and don't handicap him with the label of any section.”
― O. Henry, The Complete Works of O. Henry

“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, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“But Elsie thought she could find it. She had heard that policemen, when politely addressed, or thumbscrewed by an investigation committee, will give up information and addresses.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“When the hour comes it is to remind him of a story. Synopsis: A French girl says to her suitor: “Did you ask my father for my hand at nine o’clock this morning, as you said you would?” “I did not,” he. replies. “At nine o’clock I was fighting a duel with swords in the Bois de Boulogne.” “Coward!” she hisses.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“The consul was interested in his report. He was only twenty-four; and he had not been in Coralio long enough for his enthusiasm to cool in the heat of the tropics — a paradox that may be allowed between Cancer and Capricorn.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Where the smoke cleared, the crystal air, with some of the efficacy of faith, seemed to remove the mountains almost to the sea, bringing them so near that one might count the scarred glades on their wooded sides.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Is it trouble you are in, now, Miss,’ says I; ‘and what’s to be done about it?’ “‘’Tis none of your business at all, Denny Carnahan,’ says she, sittin’ up straight. And it was the voice of no other than Norah Flynn. “‘Then it’s not,’ says I, ‘and we’re after having a pleasant evening, Miss Flynn. Have ye seen the sights of this new Coney Island, then? I presume ye have come here for that purpose,’ says I. “‘I have,’ says she. ‘Me mother and Uncle Tim they are waiting beyond. ’Tis an elegant evening I’ve had. I’ve seen all the attractions that be.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Up with the other one,” ordered the burglar. “You might be amphibious and shoot with your left. You can count two, can’t you? Hurry up, now.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“John Perkins was not accustomed to analyzing his emotions. But as he sat in his Katy-bereft 10×12 parlor he hit unerringly upon the keynote of his discomfort. He knew now that Katy was necessary to his happiness. His feeling for her, lulled into unconsciousness by the dull round of domesticity, had been sharply stirred by the loss of her presence. Has it not been dinned into us by proverb and sermon and fable that we never prize the music till the sweet-voiced bird has flown — or in other no less florid and true utterances?”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Tis the opinion of myself, Sanderson Pratt, who sets this down, that the educational system of the United States should be in the hands of the weather bureau. I can give you good reasons for it; and you can’t tell me why our college professors shouldn’t be transferred to the meteorological department.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“To avoid /lese-majeste/ you have been presented first to the king and queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called “The Chronicle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and the Lion that Bungled his Job.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Say!” interrupted the passenger who was nobody in particular, “if you could put up a windmill on every one of them ‘wells’ you’re using, you’d be able to retire from business, wouldn’t you?” The windmill man grinned good-naturedly. “Oh, I ain’t no /Guy de Mopassong/,” he said, cheerfully. “I’m giving it to you in straight American. Well, she says something like this: ‘Mr. Gold Bonds is only a friend,’ says she;”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“The gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that holds them in slavery.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“I’m the only honest man in the republic. The government knows it; the people know it; the boodlers know it; the foreign investors know it. I make the government keep its faith. If a man is promised a job he gets it. If outside capital buys a concession it gets the goods. I run a monopoly of square dealing here. There’s no competition. If Colonel Diogenes were to flash his lantern in this precinct he’d have my address inside of two minutes. There isn’t big money in it, but it’s a sure thing, and lets a man sleep of nights.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Of course there are two sides to the question. Let us look at the other. We often hear “shop-girls” spoken of. No such persons exist. There are girls who work in shops. They make their living that way. But why turn their occupation into an adjective? Let us be fair. We do not refer to the girls who live on Fifth Avenue as “marriage-girls.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Between blasts she resorted to Epictetian philosophy in the form of pepsin chewing gum.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“We would call no one a lobster without good and sufficient claws.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“BIG JIM DOUGHERTY was a sport.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“The old couple were childless — they had only a married daughter living in Brooklyn.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Give me,” says Pogue, “a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I’m not much fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe where I don’t find any.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Mr. Ramsay was the head clerk; and as far as I am concerned I am for him. He never pinched the girls’ arms when he passed them in dark corners of the store; and when he told them stories when business was dull and the girls giggled and said: “Oh, pshaw!” it wasn’t G. Bernard they meant at all.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Don’t run down your job, Aunt Liberty; you’re all right, all right.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“Jeff is in the line of unillegal graft. He is not to be dreaded by widows and orphans; he is a reducer of surplusage. His favorite disguise is that of the target-bird at which the spendthrift or the reckless investor may shy a few inconsequential dollars. He is readily vocalized by tobacco; so, with the aid of two thick and easy-burning brevas, I got the story of his latest Autolycan adventure.”
― O. Henry, Delphi Complete Works of O. Henry

“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, The Complete Works of O. Henry