250 Quotes by Austin O'Malley

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.

Life is being, not having.

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

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

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.

Power should answer by action, not by speech.

That the saints were usually in ill luck does not canonize you.

Our lives are waves that come up out of the ocean of eternity, break upon the beach of earth, and lapse back to the ocean of eternity. Some are sunlit, some run in storm and rain; one is a quiet ripple, another is a thunderous breaker; and once in many centuries comes a great tidal wave that sweeps over a continent; but all go back to the sea and lie equally level there.

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