Austin O'Malley Quotes

The monk that invented gunpowder did as much to stop war as did all the sermons of his brethren.

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

A small poet repeats himself like a clock.

Truth as philosophy is a gas; as art, it is visible steam.

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

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

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

Autumn is a hint from God to Old Age.

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

A habit of debt is very injurious to the memory.

The fact that you have been knocked down is interesting, but the length of time you remained down is important.

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

There are more gluttons than drunkards in hell.

Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.

It is yesterday that makes tomorrow so sad.

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

Some liars are so expert they deceive themselves.

If you snub Conscience a few times she will cut your acquaintance.

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

All things come to him who waits - even justice.

Persecution is as necessary to religion as pruning to an orchard.

Humility is pride in God.

Charity is the note that resolves the discord.

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

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

The perfect critic is one ... that sees with the eyes of posterity.

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

Delay is a bitter tonic, but it increases appetite.

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

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

Sorrow, like rain makes roses and mud.

That art is best which suggests most.

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

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

Civilization is the world with its leg asleep.

Take a quart of nature, boil it down to a pint, and the residue is art.

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.

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

Law is the rudder of the ship of state.

It is a mean thief or a successful author that plunders the dead.

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

When walking through the "valley of shadows," remember, a shadow is cast by a light.

Envy is a gun with a faulty breech-lock which flares back and burns the gunner.

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

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

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

The perfection of art is to conceal the sources.

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.

And death, that sits in marble silence cold, Will furnish hope to those who may behold The meaning in the everlasting change Of all that dies, returning, wondrous strange.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

If you learn from a loss you have not lost.

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

Those who deserve love the least need it the most.

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.

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

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.

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

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

Cunning is a short blanket
if you pull it over your face, you expose your feet.

Music is another lady that talks charmingly and says nothing.

Better a bald head than none at all.

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

The difference between a mongrel and a thoroughbred, whether brute or man, is not in swiftness, beauty, or endurance, but in courage.

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

The hardest fact in the world to accept is the inevitable mixture of evil with good in all things.

Religion often gets credit for curing rascals when old age is the real medicine.

Most mysteries are soluble in time.

Well begun is not only half done, but often fully cooked.

Knowledge is flour, but wisdom is bread.

You cannot build up a character in a solitude; you need a formed character to stand a solitude.

The milk of human kindness should be brought fresh to the table every morning.

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

Art is awkward until technique has become an unconscious habit.

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

Human truth is always soiled with falsehood.

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

Each man's soul is a menagerie where Conscience, the animal-tamer, lives with a collection of wild beasts.

If the poet would avoid pepsis in his patients, his scalpel must be as clean as the surgeon's.

Some folks never handle the truth without scratching it.

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

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

If you scratch some saints you will find the devil.

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

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.

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

Wisdom is also a deeper consciousness of ignorance.

The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them.

Those who cook up stories will get into hot water.

Gold is so heavy it settles down upon the lowest souls.

The most evident quality of human life is its loneliness.

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

Liberty has as many chains as an iron-monger's shop, and as rusty.

A great tragedy passes from crest to hollow of passion, rises and sinks again, as rhythmically as sea-waves.

When we pray for death we really desire a fuller life.