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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.

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
Story
Write
Stories
Writing
Never
Pleases
Please
Public
Forget

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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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Broadway - the great sluice that washes out the dust of the gold-mines of Gotham.
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When I see a shipwreck, I like to know what caused the disaster...I learned nothing but the glow that wrapped her face when the soup came. That's the story.
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There was clearly nothing to do but flop down on the shabby little couch and howl.
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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.
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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.
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We can't buy one minute of time with cash if we could, rich people would live longer.
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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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A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
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This fair but pitiless city of Manhattan was without a soul ... its inhabitants were manikins moved by wires and springs.
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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.
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No friendship is an accident.
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Except in streetcars one should never be unnecessarily rude to a lady.
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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.
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She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
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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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Hospitality in the prairie country is not limited. Even if your enemy passes your way, you must feed him before you shoot him.
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A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
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Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
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