Quote

In the Big City a man will disappear with the suddenness and completeness of the flame of a candle that is blown out.

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
Men
Blown
Flame
Candle
Flames
Disappear
City
Cities
Suddenness
Bigs
Completeness

More quotes by O. Henry

Image
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.
O. Henry
Image
Men to whom life had appeared as a reversible coat - seamy on both sides.
O. Henry
Image
We can't buy one minute of time with cash if we could, rich people would live longer.
O. Henry
Image
Those whom we first love we seldom marry
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
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
Image
Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.
O. Henry
Image
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
Image
A good story is like a bitter pill, with the sugar coating inside of it.
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
This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.
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
A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
O. Henry
Image
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.
O. Henry
Image
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
Image
What is the world at its best but a little round field of the moving pictures with two walking together in it?
O. Henry
Image
It's said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it.
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
She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
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