Quotes from O. Henry

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

BIG JIM DOUGHERTY was a sport.

He had been always about to paint a masterpiece, but had never yet begun it.

No pretendía ser un sabio, pero había bebido hasta emborracharse en el manantial de la sabiduría.

Su rostro tenía el perfil de los veinte años y las arrugas de los cuarenta. Podía haber vivido aquella diferencia de años en un período de doce meses.

In the big city the twin spirits Romance and Adventure are always abroad seeking worthy wooers.

The old couple were childless — they had only a married daughter living in Brooklyn.

Aglaia looked up at him with a tender smile. "I want to ask him to wait," she said. "I have just found my father, and I want it to be just we two for a while. I want to tell him he will have to wait.

He could talk through twenty cigarettes on any topic that you brought up. And he never sat up when he could lie down; and never stood when he could sit.

Don't run down your job, Aunt Liberty; you're all right, all right.

Don't run down your job, Aunt Liberty; you're all right, all right.

Where the smoke cleared, the crystal air, with some of the efficacy of faith, seemed to remove the mountains almost to the sea, bringing them so near that one might count the scarred glades on their wooded sides.

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.

The air was full of human essence, of artificial enticement, of coquetry, indolence, pleasure — the man-made sense of existence.

To avoid /lese-majeste/ you have been presented first to the king and queen. They do not enter the story, which might be called "The Chronicle of the Princess, the Happy Thought, and the Lion that Bungled his Job.

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.

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.

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!

But when a sick person begins to feel that he's going to die, half my work is useless.

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.

Give me," says Pogue, "a big city for my vacation. Especially New York. I'm not much fond of New Yorkers, and Manhattan is about the only place on the globe where I don't find any.

She turned on me a flatteringly protracted but a wiltingly disapproving gaze, & then went inside, humming a light song to indicate the value she placed upon my existence.

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.

because I want to see the last one fall. I'm tired of waiting. I'm tired of thinking. I want to turn loose my hold on everything, and go sailing down, down, just like one of those poor, tired leaves.