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
Sorrow is the source of literature, joy is the source of virtue.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Sorrow
An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Nationalities, Nationality, Nation, Nationalism
If you cultivate piety as an end and not a means, you will become a hypocrite.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Hypocrisy
That the Saints were usually in ill luck does not canonize you.
—Austin O’Malley
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
Those that say they despise riches are saints or liars.
—Austin O’Malley
If you intend to use a horse a whole day and a love for a lifetime, keep the reins taut in the morning.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Love
Practical prayer is harder on the soles of your shoes than on the knees of your trousers.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Prayer
The smaller the head, the bigger the dream.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Dreams
Private interpretation in religion is like cutting your own hair.
—Austin O’Malley
If a man is a rascal do not blame him, but abuse his great grandfather—that is ‘scientific’ and it annoys no one.
—Austin O’Malley
Busy souls have no time to be busybodies.
—Austin O’Malley
All things come to him that waits—even justice.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Law
Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Religion
The novel you like is like you.
—Austin O’Malley
Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Revenge
Memory is a crazy woman that hoards colored rags and throws away food.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Memories, Memory
In levying taxes and in shearing sheep it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Taxation, Taxes
Avarice is wider than injustice, and all fallen nations lost liberty through avarice which engendered injustice.
—Austin O’Malley
They often say woman cannot keep a secret, but every woman in the world, like every man, has a hundred secrets in her own soul which she hides from even herself. The more respectable she is, the more certain it is the secrets exist.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Woman
Education should be a conscious, methodical application of the best means in the wisdom of the ages to the end that youth may know how to live completely.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Education
If you snub Conscience a few times she will cut your acquaintance.
—Austin O’Malley
It usually takes as many generations to make a religious convert as to make a gentleman.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Religion
Physical science reads through its sense of touch like a blind man, and the supply of books in braille type on the spiritual life is very small.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Science
Before you beat a child, be sure you yourself are not the cause of the offense.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Children
A habit of debt is very injurious to the memory.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Memory
You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Solitude
A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.
—Austin O’Malley
Topics: Friendship, Friends and Friendship
Religion is a process of turning your skull into a tabernacle, not of going up to Jerusalem once a year.
—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
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