Top 140 O. Henry Quotes (2026 Update)
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101. “He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it.”

— O. Henry

102. “Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.”

— O. Henry

103. “It’s an awful thing to hear a strong, desperate, fat man scream incontinently in a cave at daybreak.”

— O. Henry

104. “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

105. “Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr’s.”

— O. Henry

106. “Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces; though there is some silly theory of gravitation.”

— O. Henry

107. “If you live in an atmosphere of luxury, luxury is yours whether your money pays for it, or another’s.”

— O. Henry

108. “She thrusts hurriedly into your hand an extremely hot buttered roll, flashes out a tiny pair of scissors, snips off the second button of your overcoat, meaningly ejaculates the one word, “parallelogram!” and swiftly flies down a cross street, looking back fearfully over her shoulder. That.”

— O. Henry

109. “Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.”

— O. Henry

110. “The true adventurer goes forth aimless and uncalculating to meet and greet unknown fate. A fine example was the Prodigal Son – when he started back home.”

— O. Henry

111. “Knowledge is a strong stream of water turned on us through a hose. It disturbs our roots.”

— O. Henry

112. “What else can you expect from a town thats shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?”

— O. Henry

113. “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

114. “Bride knoweth bride at the glance of an eye. And between them swiftly passes comfort and meaning in a language that man and widows wot not of.”

— O. Henry

115. “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

116. “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

117. “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

118. “Take of London fog 30 parts; malaria 10 parts, gas leaks 20 parts, dewdrops gathered in a brickyard at sunrise 25 parts; odor of honeysuckle 15 parts. Mix. The mixture will give you an approximate conception of a Nashville drizzle.”

— O. Henry

119. “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

120. “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

121. “He had become enveloped in the Indian Summer of the Soul.”

— O. Henry

122. “You’d think New York people was all wise; but no, they can’t get a chance to learn. Every thing’s too compressed. Even the hay-seeds are bailed hay-seeds. But what else can you expect from a town that’s shut off for the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?”

— O. Henry

123. “By rights you’re a king. If I was you, I’d call for a new deal.”

— O. Henry

124. “History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.”

— O. Henry

125. “The bottle, with its impotent message, was gone out to sea, and the problem that it had provoked was reduced to a simple sum in addition – one and one make two, by the rule of arithmetic; one by the rule of romance.”

— O. Henry

126. “One dollar and eighty-seven cents. That was all. And sixty cents of it was in pennies. Pennies saved one and two at a time by bulldozing the grocer and the vegetable man and the butcher until one’s cheeks burned with the silent imputation of parsimony that such close dealing implied. Three times Della counted it. One dollar and eighty-seven cents. And the next day would be Christmas.”

— O. Henry

127. “She wore life as a rose in her bosom.”

— O. Henry

128. “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

129. “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

130. “He studied cities as women study their reflections.”

— O. Henry

131. “We still say ‘the apple of the eye’ when we wish to describe something superlatively precious.”

— O. Henry

132. “If there was ever an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptouwn on the Hudson called New York.”

— O. Henry

133. “There are a few editor men with whom I am privileged to come in contact. It has not been long since it was their habit to come in contact with me. There is a difference.”

— O. Henry

134. “Don’t run down your job, Aunt Liberty; you’re all right, all right.”

— O. Henry

135. “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

136. “The note that she struck had beaten down the doors of a closed memory; and Father Abram held his lost Aglaia close in his arms.”

— O. Henry

137. “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.”

— O. Henry

138. “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

139. “Between blasts she resorted to Epictetian philosophy in the form of pepsin chewing gum.”

— O. Henry

140. “Be content with what thou seest; and wait until Time and Experience shall teach thee to find jealousy behind the sweet smile, and hatred under the honeyed word!’ “This.”

— O. Henry

141. “In a little district west of Washington Square the streets have run crazy and broken themselves into small strips called “places.” These “places” make strange angles and curves. One street crosses itself a time or two. An artist once discovered a valuable possibility in this street. Suppose a collector with a bill for paints, paper and canvas should, in traversing this route, suddenly meet himself coming back, without a cent having been paid on account!”

— O. Henry

142. “The boys have all laid in enough footwear to last ’em ten years; and there’s nothing doing in the shoe store but dolcy far nienty.”

— O. Henry

143. “We were in the main dining-room, and there was a fine-dressed crowd there, all talking loud and enjoyable about the two St. Louis topics, the water supply and the colour line. They mix the two subjects so fast that strangers often think they are discussing water-colours; and that has given the old town something of a rep as an art centre.”

— O. Henry

144. “It would seem that the story is ended, instead of begun; that the close of a tragedy and the climax of a romance have covered the ground of interest; but, to the more curious reader it shall be some slight instruction to trace the close threads that underlie the ingenuous web of circumstances.”

— O. Henry

145. “I wouldn’t have a man,” declared Mrs. Cassidy, “that didn’t beat me up at least once a week. Shows he thinks something of you.”

— O. Henry

146. “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