Quote

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

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

O. Henry
Age: 47 †
Born: 1862
Born: September 11
Died: 1910
Died: June 5
Journalist
Writer
Greensboro
North Carolina
William Sydney Porter
Olivier Henry
Oliver Henry
Another
Otherwise
Best
Structure
Firsts
Wear
First
Clothes
Must
Pieces
Hypocrites
Every
Lives
Hypocrite
Would
Fall
Liars
Social
Presence

More quotes by O. Henry

Image
There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.
O. Henry
Image
Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man's starving!
O. Henry
Image
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
Image
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
Image
There is this difference between the grief of youth and that of old age youth's burden is lightened by as much of it as another shares old age may give and give, but the sorrow remains the same.
O. Henry
Image
Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.
O. Henry
Image
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
Image
Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces though there is some silly theory of gravitation.
O. Henry
Image
Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
O. Henry
Image
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
Image
In time truth and science and nature will adapt themselves to art. Things will happen logically, and the villain be discomfited instead of being elected to the board of directors. But in the meantime fiction must not only be divorced from fact, but must pay alimony and be awarded custody of the press despatches.
O. Henry
Image
A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.
O. Henry
Image
Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides.
O. Henry
Image
I've got some of my best yarns from park benches, lamp posts and newspaper stands.
O. Henry
Image
It was beautiful and simple, as truly great swindles are.
O. Henry
Image
Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.
O. Henry
Image
Most wonderful of all are words, and how they make friends one with another.
O. Henry
Image
O all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.
O. Henry
Image
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
Image
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