Inspirational Quotes by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (American Writer of Short Stories)

Inspirational Quotations by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter) (American Writer of Short Stories)

William Sydney Porter (1862–1910,) who wrote under the assumed name O. Henry, was an American author of over 400 popular short stories.

Porter was raised in North Carolina. At age 15, he relocated to Texas after he began to show symptoms of tuberculosis. In due course, he started work as a teller for the First National Bank in Austin, got married, and had a child. After he moved to Houston, he was called back to Austin when shortages were uncovered in the bank’s ledgers. They were most likely from poor bookkeeping. Porter may have evaded conviction, but he escaped to Louisiana and then to Honduras. His wife was too sick with tuberculosis to join him there. Brokenhearted, he returned to Texas and turned himself in, with the intention that he could be with his wife while she died. Subsequently, he was sentenced to prison for five years.

It was in a Columbus, Ohio, jail that Porter’s writing career took off—he published 14 stories under the name of one of the prison’s guards, Orrin Henry. He sent his stories to a friend, who would forward them to publishers so that no one ever suspected that O. Henry was writing from jail. It wasn’t until after his death that the public discovered that O. Henry had gotten his start in prison.

Porter was let out for good behavior after three years in prison. He made his way in 1902 up to New York, and over the next three years, turned out a story a week for the New York World. His best-known stories include “The Gift of the Magi,” “The Furnished Room,” “The Last Leaf,”—all set in New York. One of his very last stories was his funniest, “The Ransom of Red Chief.”

More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

Love and business and family and religion and art and patriotism are nothing but shadows of words when a man’s starving.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Poverty

If man knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Men, Women, Men & Women

Fortune is a prize to be won. Adventure is the road to it. Chance is what may lurk in the shadows at the roadside.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Life

She would have made a splendid wife, for crying only made her eyes more bright and tender.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Sorrow

A straw vote only shows which way the hot air blows.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Voting

There is one day that is ours. Thanksgiving Day is the one day that is purely American.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

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 (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Old Age

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Conversation

A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Criminals, Crime

My advice to you, if you should ever be in a hold-up, is to line up with the cowards and save your bravery for an occasion when it may be of some benefit to you.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Bravery

What else can you expect from a town that’s shut off from the world by the ocean on one side and New Jersey on the other?
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Cities, City Life

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.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)

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 (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Appreciation, Blessings, Gratitude, Home

Life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Realistic Expectations, Adversity

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Women, Men & Women, Men

There is no well-defined boundary between honesty and dishonesty. The frontiers of one blend with the outside limits of the other, and he who attempts to tread this dangerous ground may be sometimes in one domain and sometimes in the other.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Honesty

We may achieve climate, but weather is thrust upon us.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: One liners, Weather

It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Cheating, Deception/Lying

Turn up the lights. I don’t want to go home in the dark.
—O. Henry (William Sydney Porter)
Topics: Famous Last Words, Last Words