Top 180 Austin O'Malley Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “When you are dealing with a child, keep all your wits about you, and sit on the floor.”

— Austin O'Malley

52. “A man’s life is like a well, not like a snake – it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.”

— Austin O'Malley

53. “Originality in literature is only a new coat of paint on an old house.”

— Austin O'Malley

54. “A rose gets its color and fragrance from the root, and man his virtue from his childhood.”

— Austin O'Malley

55. “An essential quality of beauty is aloofness.”

— Austin O'Malley

56. “Patience is moral elasticity.”

— Austin O'Malley

57. “Some men pray only when the world is dark, as owls hoot at night.”

— Austin O'Malley

58. “The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father.”

— Austin O'Malley

59. “Talent is a tenant in the house owned by genius.”

— Austin O'Malley

60. “We use religion like a trolley-car – we ride on it only while it is going our way.”

— Austin O'Malley

61. “If you scratch some saints you will find the devil.”

— Austin O'Malley

62. “Learned men fall into error oftenest by mistaking knowledge for wisdom.”

— Austin O'Malley

63. “An Irishman can be worried by the consciousness that there is nothing to worry about.”

— Austin O'Malley

64. “The fact that you have been knocked down is interesting, but the length of time you remained down is important.”

— Austin O'Malley

65. “It is as easy to give advice to yourself as to others, and as useless.”

— Austin O'Malley

66. “If you combine all the spectral rays into a single beam, you get white light; and, if you combine all the virtues into a single beam, you get charity.”

— Austin O'Malley

67. “The smaller the head, the bigger the dream.”

— Austin O'Malley

68. “A habit of debt is very injurious to the memory.”

— Austin O'Malley

69. “And death, that sits in marble silence cold, Will furnish hope to those who may behold The meaning in the everlasting change Of all that dies, returning, wondrous strange.”

— Austin O'Malley

70. “True patriotism is a charity so wide that it covers a nation.”

— Austin O'Malley

71. “Ugliness is a point of view; an ulcer is wonderful to a pathologist.”

— Austin O'Malley

72. “Justice and the facade of a temple are seen best from the outside.”

— Austin O'Malley

73. “If all fools wore white hoods, any crowd would look like a field of blooming buckwheat.”

— Austin O'Malley

74. “Well begun is not only half done, but often fully cooked.”

— Austin O'Malley

75. “Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert.”

— Austin O'Malley

76. “A sin is nothing but a deordination of reason, but that is enough.”

— Austin O'Malley

77. “It is a mean thief or a successful author that plunders the dead.”

— Austin O'Malley

78. “A hole is nothing at all, but you can break your neck in it.”

— Austin O'Malley

79. “A charitable man is like an apple tree-he gives his fruit and is silent; the philanthropist is like the successful hen.”

— Austin O'Malley

80. “The monk that invented gunpowder did as much to stop war as did all the sermons of his brethren.”

— Austin O'Malley

81. “We should thank God that He did not give us the power of hearing through walls; otherwise there would be no such thing as friendship.”

— Austin O'Malley

82. “The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.”

— Austin O'Malley

83. “The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: “Lazarus, come forth!” and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.”

— Austin O'Malley

84. “Reason is the miner’s lamp used in bringing up ore from the mind.”

— Austin O'Malley

85. “Prose is a photography, poetry is a painting in oil-colors.”

— Austin O'Malley

86. “You cannot knock a man down who will not stand up, nor argue with a skeptic.”

— Austin O'Malley

87. “Autumn is a hint from God to Old Age.”

— Austin O'Malley

88. “Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.”

— Austin O'Malley

89. “If you handle truth carelessly, it will cut your fingers.”

— Austin O'Malley

90. “Those who cook up stories will get into hot water.”

— Austin O'Malley

91. “Some men are like a church-organ – you can play on them for a lifetime and always find new harmonies; others are like a music-box – they have four or five thin jingles.”

— Austin O'Malley

92. “The hardest fact in the world to accept is the inevitable mixture of evil with good in all things.”

— Austin O'Malley

93. “Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine.”

— Austin O'Malley

94. “Before you beat a child, be sure yourself are not the cause of the offense.”

— Austin O'Malley

95. “The difference between a human being ten years of age and one fifty years of age lies altogether in the matter of toys.”

— Austin O'Malley

96. “Exclusiveness is a characteristic of recent riches, high society, and the skunk.”

— Austin O'Malley

97. “Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.”

— Austin O'Malley

98. “A drunkard is like a whiskey-bottle, all neck and belly and no head.”

— Austin O'Malley

99. “The modern king has become a vermiform appendix: useless when quiet; when obtrusive, in danger of removal.”

— Austin O'Malley

100. “You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.”

— Austin O'Malley