Tag: William Sydney Porter

Perhaps there is no happiness in life so perfect as the martyr’s.

William Sydney Porter

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.

William Sydney Porter

A burglar who respects his art always takes his time before taking anything else.

William Sydney Porter

The magi, as you know, were wise men — wonderfully wise men — who brought gifts to the Babe in the manger. They invented the art of giving Christmas presents. Being wise, their gifts were no doubt wise ones, possibly bearing the privilege of exchange in case of duplication. And here I have lamely related to you the uneventful chronicle of two foolish children in a flat who most unwisely sacrificed for each other the greatest treasures of their house. 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.

William Sydney Porter

Busy as a one-armed man with the nettle-rash pasting on wallpaper.

William Sydney Porter

History is bright and fiction dull with homely men who have charmed women.

William Sydney Porter

You can’t appreciate home till you’ve left it, money till it’s spent, your wife till she’s joined a women’s club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.

William Sydney Porter

It was beautiful and simple as all truly great swindles are.

William Sydney Porter

Bohemia is nothing more than the little country in which you do not live. If you try to obtain citizenship in it, at once the court and retinue pack the royal archives and treasure and move away beyond the hills.

William Sydney Porter

She plucked from my lapel the invisible strand of lint (the universal act of woman to proclaim ownership).

William Sydney Porter