O. Henry Quotes

A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

O. Henry

• Moral

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Quotes to Explore

• Moral indignation is jealousy with a halo.

  

  H. G. Wells
  • Moral
  • Jealousy
  • Halo

• Yes, there is a terrible moral in 'Dorian Gray' - a moral which the prurient will not be able to find in it, but it will be revealed to all whose minds are healthy. Is this an artistic error? I fear it is. It is the only error in the book.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Book
  • Moral
  • Healthy

• Perhaps misguided moral passion is better than confused indifference.

  

  Iris Murdoch
  • Passion
  • Moral
  • Better

• You can't go around hoping that most people have sterling moral characters. The most you can hope for is that people will pretend that they do.

  

  Fran Lebowitz
  • People
  • Hope
  • Moral

• For the record, I believe elected officials should talk about faith. Our founders believed the moral principles of faith were indispensable to our nation's survival. The Declaration of Independence mentions God four times.

  

  Gary Bauer
  • God
  • Believe
  • Faith

• With the monstrous weapons man already has, humanity is in danger of being trapped in this world by its moral adolescents.

  

  Omar N. Bradley
  • World
  • Man
  • Humanity

• Having been raised by actors who love moral ambiguity and flawed protagonists, I feel like it's sort of in the blood to want to take it on.

  

  Laura Dern
  • Like
  • Moral
  • Feel

• Readers of novels often fall into the bad habit of being overly exacting about the characters' moral flaws. They apply to these fictional beings standards that no one they know in real life could possibly meet.

  

  Edmund White
  • Life
  • Real
  • Bad

• Once you don't vote your ideals... that has serious undermining affects. It erodes the moral basis of our democracy.

  

  Ralph Nader
  • Democracy
  • Serious
  • Moral

• Arab civilizations had been of an abstract nature, moral and intellectual rather than applied; and their lack of public spirit made their excellent private qualities futile. They were fortunate in their epoch: Europe had fallen barbarous; and the memory of Greek and Latin learning was fading from men's minds.

  

  T. E. Lawrence
  • Men
  • Nature
  • Learning

• In all good westerns, the good guy is always a little bit questionable because he kind-of has to make moral judgments.

  

  Daniel Craig
  • Good
  • Guy
  • Always

• I think if we wish to live in any kind of a moral universe, we must hold the perpetrators of violence responsible for the violence they perpetrate. It's very simple. The criminal is responsible for the crime.

  

  Salman Rushdie
  • Live
  • Wish
  • Simple

• And while I might not always agree with the viewpoint I have to portray, because I play a district attorney, as an actress I can always tell myself that my character is trying to take the moral high ground.

  

  Lara Flynn Boyle
  • Trying
  • Character
  • High

• The path of progress cuts through the four-way intersection of the moral, medical, religious and political - and whichever way you turn, you are likely to run over someone's deeply held beliefs.

  

  Nancy Gibbs
  • Political
  • Religious
  • Moral

• It is in their inherent moral components that recent Western strategies may be deficient. What percentage of the populations in countries engaged in the 14-year effort in Afghanistan could even name the three main Taliban groups with whom their soldiers have been engaged?

  

  H. R. McMaster
  • May
  • Effort
  • Moral

• We need to be clear when we venerate entrepreneurs what we are venerating. They are not moral leaders. If they were moral leaders, they wouldn't be great businessmen.

  

  Malcolm Gladwell
  • Great
  • Moral
  • Need

• Just as we reject racism, sexism, ageism, and heterosexism, we reject speciesism. The species of a sentient being is no more reason to deny the protection of this basic right than race, sex, age, or sexual orientation is a reason to deny membership in the human moral community to other humans.

  

  Gary L. Francione
  • Age
  • Community
  • Moral

• Although lynchings have steadily increased in number and barbarity during the last twenty years, there has been no single effort put forth by the many moral and philanthropic forces of the country to put a stop to this wholesale slaughter.

  

  Ida B. Wells
  • Country
  • Stop
  • Single

• Guided by nothing but pop culture values, many children no longer learn how to think about morality and virtue, or to think of them at all. They grow up with no shared moral framework, believing that the highest values are diversity, tolerance and non-judgmentalism.

  

  Gary Bauer
  • Up
  • Children
  • Culture

• I had to work up the courage to even imagine myself running for Congress. But I eventually decided that our country had a moral problem in only letting white men - even the right-minded ones - have a seat at the table.

  

  Laura Moser
  • Up
  • Work
  • Men

• Satire's nature is to be one-sided, contemptuous of ambiguity, and so unfairly selective as to find in the purity of ridicule an inarguable moral truth.

  

  E. L. Doctorow
  • Truth
  • Nature
  • Moral

• I don't really have an issue with showing certain parts of my body. I'd rather not, but it's not a big deal. Growing up in Sweden, it's natural over there.

  

  Malin Akerman
  • Up
  • Growing
  • Body

• Thus, and not otherwise, the world was made. Either something or nothing must depend on individual choices.

  

  C. S. Lewis
  • World
  • Choices
  • Individual Choice

• A story with a moral appended is like the bill of a mosquito. It bores you, and then injects a stinging drop to irritate your conscience.

  

  O. Henry
  • Moral