Top 140 O. Henry Quotes (2025 Update)

1. “No friendship is an accident.”

— O. Henry

2. “It ain’t the roads we take; it’s what’s inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.”

— O. Henry

3. “If a person has lived through war, poverty and love, he has lived a full life.”

— O. Henry

4. “Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.”

— O. Henry

5. “Write what you like; there is no other rule.”

— O. Henry

6. “O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.”

— O. Henry

7. “Bolivar cannot carry double.”

— O. Henry

8. “There is a saying that no man has tasted the full flavor of life until he has known poverty, love, and war.”

— O. Henry

9. “Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.”

— O. Henry

10. “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.”

— O. Henry

11. “A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.”

— O. Henry

12. “Women’s weapon, water-drops.”

— O. Henry

13. “We can’t buy one minute of time with cash; if we could, rich people would live longer.”

— O. Henry

14. “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

15. “There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.”

— O. Henry

16. “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

17. “Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving!”

— O. Henry

18. “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

19. “Those whom we first love we seldom marry.”

— O. Henry

20. “In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called “places.”

— O. Henry

21. “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.”

— O. Henry

22. “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

23. “The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate.”

— O. Henry

24. “Eight dollars a week or a million a year – what is the difference? A mathematician or a wit would give you the wrong answer.”

— O. Henry

25. “All great men have declared that they owe their sucess to the aid and encouragement of some brilliant woman.”

— O. Henry

26. “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.”

— O. Henry

27. “Whenever he saw a dollar in another man’s hands he took it as a personal grudge, if he couldn’t take it any other way.”

— O. Henry

28. “The Give and Take Athletic Association lived up to its name. The hall of the association in Orchard street was fitted out with muscle- making inventions. With the fibres thus builded up the members were wont to engage the police and rival social and athletic organisations in joyous combat. Between these more serious occupations the Saturday night hop with the paper-box factory girls came as a refining influence and as an efficient screen.”

— O. Henry

29. “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

30. “When a man begins to be hilarious in a sorrowful way you can bet a million that he is dyeing his hair.”

— O. Henry

31. “To a woman nothing seems quite impossible to the powers of the man she worships.”

— O. Henry

32. “Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.”

— O. Henry

33. “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

34. “She started to try to cover the sad marks of what she had done. Love and large-hearted giving, when added together, can leave deep marks. It is never easy to cover these marks, dear friends, never easy.”

— O. Henry

35. “The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.”

— O. Henry

36. “By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.”

— O. Henry

37. “Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.”

— O. Henry

38. “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.”

— O. Henry

39. “Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling – something.”

— O. Henry

40. “East is East, and West is San Francisco.”

— O. Henry

41. “We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.”

— O. Henry

42. “Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.”

— O. Henry

43. “If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.”

— O. Henry

44. “Twenty dollars a week doesn’t go far.”

— O. Henry

45. “There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.”

— O. Henry

46. “There are stories in everything. I’ve got some of my best yarns from park benches, lampposts, and newspaper stands.”

— O. Henry

47. “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

48. “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. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.”

— O. Henry

49. “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.”

— O. Henry

50. “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.”

— O. Henry