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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

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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
Ideals
Love
Seek
Sweet
Silence
Whether
Musty
Bookshelves
Done
Lobster
Must
Ideal
Work

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Young artists must pave their way to Art by drawing pictures for magazine stories that young authors write to pave their way to Literature.
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If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it, you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky stuff. Little old New York's good enough for us--that's what they sing.
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What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?
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If you can't write a story that pleases yourself, you will never please the public. But in writing the story forget the public.
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Those whom we first love we seldom marry
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History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.
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Whenever my patient begins to count the carriages in her funeral procession I subtract 50 per cent from the curative power of medicines.
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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.
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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.
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He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.
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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.
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In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out.
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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.
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Of habit, the power that keeps the earth from flying to pieces though there is some silly theory of gravitation.
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Greenwich Village... the village of low rents and high arts.
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It ain't the roads we take it's what's inside of us that makes us turn out the way we do.
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The lonesomest thing in all the world is a soul when it is making ready to go on its mysterious, far journey.
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Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
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There is one day that is ours. There is one day when all we Americans who are not self-made go back to the old home to eat saleratus biscuits and marvel how much nearer to the porch the old pump looks than it used to. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.
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By nature and doctrines I am addicted to the habit of discovering choice places wherein to feed.
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