Austin O’Malley (1858–1932) was an American aphorist, ophthalmologist, and pathologist. He was the author of the book of aphorisms Keystones of Thought (1914.)
Born in Pittston, Pennsylvania, O’Malley entered Fordham University at age 14 and later studied philosophy and languages at the Gregorian University in Rome. After shifting to medicine and studying at Georgetown and the University of Berlin, he returned to America as a bacteriologist and pathologist. He championed the use of the newly-discovered diphtheria antitoxin serum.
O’Malley served as a professor of English literature at the University of Notre Dame 1895–1902 and became a reputed lecturer on Dante’s poetry. Following a short period of ill health, he became an ophthalmologist specializing in diseases of the eye at Wills Eye Hospital in Philadelphia.
O’Malley wrote on literary and medical subjects; his works include Thoughts of a Recluse (1898,) Essays in Pastoral Medicine (1906,) The Cure of Alcoholism (1913,) and Ethics of Medical Homicide and Mutilation (1920.)
O’Malley was a brother of the playwright and writer Frank Ward O’Malley.
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Austin O’Malley
God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Wealth, Money
A habit of debt is very injurious to the memory.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Memory
Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Revenge
Avarice is wider than injustice, and all fallen nations lost liberty through avarice which engendered injustice.
—Austin O’Malley
The harder you throw down a football and a good character, the higher they rebound; but a thrown reputation is like an egg.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Character
Ordinarily when a man in difficulty turns to prayer, he has already tried every other means of escape.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Prayer
Many a man wins glory for prudence by seeking advice, then seeking advice as to what advice would be best to take, and finally following appetite.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Advice
You may live in the fashionable quarter of town, but there is a dark slum somewhere on your property.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Society
Never carry your shotgun or your knowledge at half-cock.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Knowledge
That the Saints were usually in ill luck does not canonize you.
—Austin O’Malley
Sorrow is the source of literature, joy is the source of virtue.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Sorrow
It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Truth
An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Nation, Nationalism, Nationalities, Nationality
If you snub Conscience a few times she will cut your acquaintance.
—Austin O’Malley
A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Friends and Friendship, Friendship
You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Solitude
You cannot chase a dollar and an ideal at the same time.
—Austin O’Malley
An agnostic is a street faker that shuts his good eyes and holds out the placard, ‘I am blind’.
—Austin O’Malley
Private interpretation in religion is like cutting your own hair.
—Austin O’Malley
Show me a genuine case of platonic friendship, and I shall show you two old or homely faces.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Friends and Friendship
The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Fathers, Family, Father
The smaller the head, the bigger the dream.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Dreams
Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Religion
You cannot weld cake-dough to cast iron, nor a girl to an old man.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Marriage
It usually takes as many generations to make a religious convert as to make a gentleman.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Religion
Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Prayer
If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Silence
If you cultivate piety as an end and not a means, you will become a hypocrite.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Hypocrisy
The novel you like is like you.
—Austin O’Malley
One of the most important truths in the world is that there is worth enough in any rascal to cost the spilling of the Precious Blood.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Worth
Religion is a process of turning your skull into a tabernacle, not of going up to Jerusalem once a year.
—Austin O’Malley
Those that say they despise riches are saints or liars.
—Austin O’Malley
Exclusiveness is a characteristic of recent riches, high society, and the skunk.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Pride
There is as close a connection between youth and faith as between age and compromise.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Youth
A politician is like quick-silver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Politics
A coal fire softens iron, and sorrow softens a man’s heart, but both revert to the original hardness.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Sorrow
Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Memory, Memories
All things come to him that waits—even justice.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Law
In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Taxes, Taxation
Before you beat a child, be sure you yourself are not the cause of the offense.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Children
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