Austin O'Malley Quotes

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

If you combine all the spectral rays into a single beam, you get white light; and, if you combine all the virtues into a single beam, you get charity.

Death is an antidote for this life, and it makes another more stable form of life which is insoluble in everything.

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.

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

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

Despair is vinegar from the wine of hope.

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

Those who deserve love the least need it the most.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Patience has tender feet.

The perjurer's mother told white lies.

Wisdom grows in quiet places.

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

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

Some folks never handle the truth without scratching it.

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

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

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.

When a great life sets it leaves an afterglow on the sky far into the night.

Every April God rewrites the book of Genesis.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

Truth lives in the cellar, error on the doorstep.

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

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.

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

Charity that is always beginning at home stays there.

Those who cook up stories will get into hot water.

Better a bald head than none at all.

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

Patience is the analogue of God's serenity.

Happiness is the harvest of a quiet eye.

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

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

In levying taxes and in shearing sheep, it is well to stop when you get down to the skin.

The statesman shears the sheep; the politician skins them.