Austin o'malley quotes

The collision of a great man with a great idea strikes fire in dry flax.

The habits of a young man are, like his coat, removable; the habits of an old man are like the drapery of a statue.

A worship of truth can be idolatry if the truth is small enough.

A small poet repeats himself like a clock.

Wisdom grows in quiet places.

Humor wades across a brook, wit jumps over it.

Many a man wins glory for prudence by seeking advice, then seeking advice as to what advice would be best to take, and finally following appetite.

You cannot gather much truth by searching the fields; you must sink shafts.

Where there is a choice of two evils, most men take both.

You cannot chase a dollar and an ideal at the same time.

It is easier to prevent thistles and habits than to uproot them.

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.

Reason clears and plants the wilderness of the imagination to harvest the wheat of art.

Show me a genuine case of platonic friendship, and I shall show you two old or homely faces.

A youth's knowledge is like a cheap shotgun-likely to do as much damage to the owner as to the game.

Worry is half impatience and half ignorance.

That art is best which suggests most.

Friends made fast seldom remain fast.

The living have their eyes opened by closing the eyes of the dead.

Treat kindly every miserable truth that knocks begging at your door, otherwise you will some day fail to recognize Truth Himself when He comes in rags.

Delay is a bitter tonic, but it increases appetite.

Sorrow may be a good thing for a woman's heart, but it is a poor cosmetic for her face.

Happiness and unhappiness differ as a bucket hammered from gold differs from one pressed in tin ... Each carries the same water.

The fear we throw about danger is always as disproportionate as a paternal shirt on an infant.

The worst misfortune that can happen to an ordinary man is to have an extraordinary father.

We smile at the women who are eagerly following the fashions in dress whilst we are as eagerly following the fashions in thought.

Some men, like a wet dog, sprinkle a shower of advice over you when you are least prepared for a bath.

The reason we constantly discover new truth in Shakespeare is that his complete understanding of the particular includes the universal.

If you keep your mouth shut you will never put your foot in it.

Those who listen to lies lose the ability to hear the truth.

The most dangerous savages live in cities.

A sin is nothing but a deordination of reason, but that is enough.

A sane man often reasons from sound premises; an insane man commonly reasons as well, but the premises are unsound.

Suspicion is an owl that flies when the light is bad and catches only vermin for food.

If you keep your eyes so fixed on heaven that you never look at the earth, you will stumble into hell.

The difference between a human being ten years of age and one fifty years of age lies altogether in the matter of toys.

Those who have suffered are best able to help those who are suffering.

Boards of public charity were invented by the devil to prevent real individual charity.

Revenge is often like biting a dog because the dog bit you.

If you sit by the wayside waiting for Success, your knees will be too stiff to follow her when she passes.

Every April God rewrites the book of Genesis.

Civilization sails prettily like a child's rubber balloon until it hits a sharp object; then it is likely to collapse like the balloon.

Half-liberty comes with wisdom, full liberty with death.

The Devil is not afraid to sit on an altar.

Shame is the turnkey that keeps our evil desires in jail.

When you are dealing with a child, keep all your wits about you, and sit on the floor.

Learned men fall into error oftenest by mistaking knowledge for wisdom.

The only thing on earth that can determine itself is a human soul.

If you scratch some saints you will find the devil.

A drunkard is like a whiskey-bottle, all neck and belly and no head.

The weaker the man in authority... the stronger his insistence that all his privileges be acknowledged.

A politician is like quicksilver: if you try to put your finger on him, you find nothing under it.

The modern king has become a vermiform appendix: useless when quiet; when obtrusive, in danger of removal.

The most evident quality of human life is its loneliness.

Love is a boomerang that returns to the thrower's hand.

All things come to him who waits - even justice.

Truth and eggs are useful only while they are fresh.

Atheism is a disease of the mind caused by eating underdone philosophy

A man's life is like a well, not like a snake--it should be measured by its depth, not by its length.

No matter who you are, you will be put abed at last with a shovel.

Those who think it is permissible to tell white lies soon grow color-blind.

God shows his contempt for wealth by the kind of person he selects to receive it.

Knowledge is flour, but wisdom is bread.

If the devil went about doing a tenth of what he is accused of doing he would be poor from paying the blacksmith for ox-shoes for his hooves.

There is a form of literature that is a deed, and a form that is only talk, and the latter passes away like a conversation.

If you have forgotten how to be a child you cannot teach children.

Some men are like a church-organ -- you can play on them for a lifetime and always find new harmonies; others are like a music-box -- they have four or five thin jingles.

A woman, like a cross-eyed man, looks one way, but goes another--hence her mysteriousness.

It is as easy to give advice to yourself as to others, and as useless.

The American government is a rule of the people, by the people, for the bosses.

A charitable man is like an apple tree-he gives his fruit and is silent; the philanthropist is like the successful hen.

Life is a bubble in a lake, that glitters for an instant, bursts, and leaves not even a blur on the water; it is the leap of a minnow, which sends a tiny ripple trembling for a few inches.

The Son of the Carpenter made the door of heaven so low that you must either take off your plumes or stoop humbly to enter it.

You can swim in life and seawater, but both are hard to swallow.

Before you beat a child, be sure yourself are not the cause of the offense.

Wisdom is also a deeper consciousness of ignorance.

If you cultivate piety as an end and not a means, you will become a hypocrite.

A home-made friend wears longer than one you buy in the market.

Most mysteries are soluble in time.

Partial justice may exist with hatred; full justice requires charity.

After thirty-five a man begins to have thoughts about women; before that he has feelings.

Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.

You are not obliged to put on evening clothes to meet God.

Laws are made by the old, exceptions by the young.

The perjurer's mother told white lies.

Art knows, life applies knowledge; art feels, life acts.

Life is being, not having.

Marriage is commonly a meal wherein the soup is better than the desert.

Memory is a crazy woman who hoards colored rags and throws away food.

If you learn from a loss you have not lost.

A book is like a money-changer: it pays you back in another form what you brint to it.

Man and the earth move in orbits: what they did before, they will do again.

Originality in literature is only a new coat of paint on an old house.

No man can have a reasonable opinion of women until he has long lost interest in hair-restorers.

Some liars are so expert they deceive themselves.

It is twice as hard to crush a half-truth as a whole lie.

True patriotism is a charity so wide that it covers a nation.

Those that say they despise riches are saints or liars.

You can't change the world But you can change the facts And when you change the facts You change points of view If you change points of view You may change a vote And when you change a vote You may change the world

The swing of art is circular, from form to formalism, from formalism to formlessness, from formlessness to form again.

Law is the rudder of the ship of state.

The ideal historian goes to the mouth of the tomb, cries: "Lazarus, come forth!" and sets him that was dead for ages, blinking and passionate, in the sun.

Those who cook up stories will get into hot water.

Public opinion is the pennant on a nation's mast which shows the politician and the editor how to trim the sails.

Most reformers, like a pair of trousers on a windy clothesline, go through a vast deal of vehement motion, but stay in the same place.

Art is awkward until technique has become an unconscious habit.

Man usually thinks liberty is the power of doing what he likes to do. That is license.

We must be laid like a brand in the fire ... if we would gain immortal youth.

Exclusiveness is a characteristic of recent riches, high society, and the skunk.

Reason is the miner's lamp used in bringing up ore from the mind.

A rose gets its color and fragrance from the root, and man his virtue from his childhood.

Ordinarily when a man in difficulty turns to prayer, he has already tried every other means of escape.

If you handle truth carelessly, it will cut your fingers.

Better a bald head than none at all.

The three most important events of human life are equally devoid of reason: birth, marriage and death.

Sorrow, like rain makes roses and mud.

Prose is a photography, poetry is a painting in oil-colors.

A book reviewer is usually a barker before the door of a publisher's circus.

Life is a charity ball given by the leaders of society. A few dance, get their charity's worth to the last penny; and the poor stand outside the gate and watch with hungry eyes the glint of jewels in the warm air. Then comes the lackey Death, and he says: "Madam and my Master, your carriage waits." So they go away into the dark in the carriage of the black plumes, and the dancing continues.

An Englishmen thinks seated; a Frenchmen standing; an American pacing, an Irishman, afterwards.

The only original part in a work of art is the infusion of the artist's own character, if he has one.

There is more in the education of children than the everlasting iteration of the word "don't!"

Moral progress is a process of isolation; the mountain tops are lonely.

Patience is moral elasticity.

We should thank God that He did not give us the power of hearing through walls; otherwise there would be no such thing as friendship.