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

• 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

• 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

• When you work for the C.I.A. or as a diplomat, or serve in the military, you're not serving as a Democrat or a Republican; you serve as an American, whatever your personal moral compass or political views might be. So that would describe me.

  

  Valerie Plame
  • Work
  • American
  • Political

• The moral turpitude of the boys of today appears to center in their failure to concentrate on any particular objective long enough to obtain their maximum results.

  

  Major Taylor
  • Long
  • Today
  • Moral

• Hope and optimism have defined my political career, and I continue to be hopeful and optimistic about Canada. Young people have been a great source of inspiration for me.

  

  Jack Layton
  • People
  • Great
  • Hope

• Am I not correct in saying that Iran has never voiced that they are developing a nuclear weapon, nor do they have any intention of using a nuclear weapon against the United States? That's never actually been voiced. I don't know where that has come from, but it hasn't been from Iran.

  

  Gary Johnson
  • Know
  • Never
  • Saying

• History is full of examples of people who clamp down after they began to enjoy too much freedom. Freedom can lead to instability, anarchy, and confusion. So there can be a moral counter-revolution.

  

  Gary Ross
  • People
  • History
  • Freedom

• I try to be an ethical, moral person and a nice person, and I like to have that reflected in my comedy. I'm not a mean comedian, and I don't think that my comedy is mean. I think that for the most part, it's more focused on the diversity that we all handle and try to provide a distraction from the disaster of modern living.

  

  T. J. Miller
  • Nice
  • Comedy
  • Moral

• There is no such thing as a moral or an immoral book. Books are well written, or badly written.

  

  Oscar Wilde
  • Book
  • Moral
  • Thing

• Even if animal experiments did result in a cure for AIDS, of which there is no chance, I’d be against it on moral grounds.

  

  Ingrid Newkirk
  • Moral
  • Animal

• You don't need religion to have morals. If you can't decide right from wrong then you lack empathy, not religion.

  

  Harry Edward Kane
  • Moral
  • Needs
  • Empathy

• How we live our lives gives those we love permission to do the same. That is a power and a responsibility that we can never take lightly.

  

  Hal Elrod
  • Live
  • Power
  • Giving

• In the time that I have been acquainted with this region I have become increasingly aware of it as a testament of water, the origin and guide of its contours and gradients and of all the lives - the plants and small creatures, and the culture - that evolved here. That was always here to be seen, of course, and the recognition has forced itself, in one form or other, upon people in every part of the world who have been directly involved with the growing of living things. The gardener who ignores it is soon left with no garden.

  

  W. S. Merwin
  • People
  • Time
  • World

• 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