O. Henry

If men knew how women pass the time when they are alone, they’d never marry.

The gray ghost that sometimes peeps through the rings of smoke is that of slain old King Convention. Freedom is the tyrant that holds them in slavery.

Which instigates the moral reflection that life is made up of sobs, sniffles, and smiles, with sniffles predominating.

She had
become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the
air he breathed — necessary but scarcely noticed.

Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of existence

"They had met at the table d'hôte of an Eighth Street "Delmonico's," and found their tastes in art, chicory salad and bishop sleeves so congenial that the joint studio resulted."

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.

Many a happy hour she had spent planning for something nice for him. Something fine and rare and sterling — something

Each of us, when our day's work is done, must seek our ideal, whether it be love or pinochle or lobster à la Newburg, or the sweet silence of the musty bookshelves.

There'll never be a perfect breakfast eaten until some man grows arms long enough to stretch down to New Orleans for his coffee & over to Norfolk for his rolls, & reaches up to Vermont & digs a slice of butter out of a spring-house, & then turns over a beehive close to a white clover patch out in Indiana for the rest. Then he'd come pretty close to making a meal on the amber that the gods eat on Mount Olympia.

But in a last word to the wise of these days let it be said that of all who give gifts these two were the wisest. Of all who give and receive gifts, such as they are wisest. Everywhere they are wisest. They are the magi.

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

You see this robe that I wear?” Bellchambers caressingly touched the straight-hanging garment: “At last I have found something that will not bag at the knees.

Pennies saved one and two at a time

Write what you like; there is no other rule.