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10 Quotes for 'O. Henry (pseudonym of William Sydney Porter)' in the Database.
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Letter "O" »
O. Henry (pseudonym of William Sydney Porter) Quotes
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Inject a few raisins of conversation into the tasteless dough of
existence.
Topic: Conversation
Source: The Complete Like of John Hopkins
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Silent, grim, colossal, the Big City has ever stood against its
revilers. They call it hard as iron; they say that nothing of
pity beats in its bosom; they compare its streets with lonely
forests and deserts of lava. But beneath the hard crust of the
lobster is found a delectable and luscious food. Perhaps a
different simile would have been wiser. Still nobody should take
offence. We would call nobody a lobster with good and sufficient
claws.
Topic: New York
Source: Between Rounds, in "Four Million"
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New York is the Caoutchouc City. . . . They have the furor
rubberendi.
Topic: New York
Source: Comedy in Rubber, in "The Voice of the City"
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In dress, habits, manners, provincialism, routine and narrowness,
he acquired that charming insolence, that irritating
completeness, that sophisticated crassness, that overbalanced
poise that makes the Manhattan gentleman so delightfully small in
his greatness.
Topic: New York
Source: Defeat of the City, in "The Voice of the City"
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Far below and around lay the city like a ragged purple dream.
The irregular houses were like the broken exteriors of cliffs
lining deep gulches and winding streams. Some were mountainous;
some lay in long, monotonous rows like, the basalt precipices
hanging over desert canons. Such was the background of the
wonderful, cruel, enchanting, bewildering, fatal, great city.
But into this background were cut myriads of brilliant
parallelograms and circles and squares through which glowed many
colored lights. And out of the violet and purple depths ascended
like the city's soul, sound and odors and thrills that make up
the civic body. There arose the breath of gaiety unrestrained,
of love, of hate, of all the passions that man can know. There
below him lay all things, good or bad, that can be brought from
the four corners of the earth to instruct, please, thrill,
enrich, elevate, cast down, nurture or kill. Thus the flavor of
it came up to him and went into his blood.
Topic: New York
Source: The Duel, in "Strictly Business"
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Well, little old Noisyville-on-the-Subway is good enough for
me. . . . Me for it from the rathskellers up. Sixth Avenue is
the West now to me.
Topic: New York
Source: The Duel, in "Strictly Business"
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"If you don't mind me asking," came the bell-like tones of the
Golden Diana, "I'd like to know where you got that City Hall
brogue. I did not know that Liberty was necessarily Irish." "If
ye'd studied the history of art in its foreign complications,
ye'd not need ask," replied Mrs. Liberty, "If ye wasn't so light
and giddy ye'd know that I was made by a Dago and presented to
the American people on behalf of the French Government for the
purpose of welcomin' Irish immigrants into the Dutch city of New
York. 'Tis that I've been doing night and day since I was
erected."
Topic: New York
Source: The Lady Higher Up, in "Sixes and Sevens"
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George Washington, with his right art upraised, sits his iron
horse at the lower corner of Union Square. . . . Should the
General raise his left hand as he has raised his right, it would
point to a quarter of the city that forms a haven for the
oppressed and suppressed of foreign lands. In the cause of
national or personal freedom they have found refuge here, and the
patriot who made it for them sits his steed, overlooking their
district, while he listens through his left ear to vaudeville
that caricatures the posterity of the proteges.
Topic: New York
Source: A Philistine in Bohemia, in "Voice of the City"
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If there ever was an aviary overstocked with jays it is that
Yaptown-on-the-Hudson, call New York. Cosmopolitan they call it,
you bet. So's a piece of fly-paper. You listen close when
they're buzzing and trying to pull their feet out of the sticky
stuff. "Little old New York's good enough for us"--that's what
they sing.
Topic: New York
Source: A Tempered Wind, in "The Gentle Grafter"
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You'd think New York people was all wise; but no, they can't get
a chance to learn. Every thing's too compressed. Even the
hay-seeds are bailed hay-seeds. But what else can you expect
from a town that's shut off for the world by the ocean on one
side and New Jersey on the other?
Topic: New York
Source: A Tempered Wind, in "The Gentle Grafter"
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