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.
O. HenryRead
It's said that love makes the world go around. Let me tell you, the announcement lacks verification. It's the wind from the dinner horn that does it.
Interpretation
Love is often seen as the driving force of life, but real world experiences sometimes suggest otherwise.
This quote humorously challenges the notion that love is the sole motivator behind human actions, suggesting instead that practical needs, expressed metaphorically as 'the wind from the dinner horn,' are what truly drive people. O. Henry uses wit to point out that while love is celebrated, everyday realities and survival instincts might be more pivotal in our daily lives.
In practice
This quote can be shared at a wedding to highlight the humor in love's complexities.
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.
Yes, I get dry spells. Sometimes I can't turn out a thing for three months. When one of those spells comes on I quit trying to work and go out and see something of life. You can't write a story that's got any life in it by sitting at a writing table and thinking. You've got to get out into the streets, into the crowds, talk with people, and feel the rush and throb of real life-that's the stimulant for a story writer.
But the best, in my opinion, was the home life in the little flat--the ardent, voluble chats after the day's study; the cozy dinners and fresh, light breakfasts; the interchange of ambitions--ambitions interwoven each with the other's or else inconsiderable--the mutual help and inspiration; and--overlook my artlessness--stuffed olives and cheese sandwiches at 11 p.m.
You can't appreciate home till you've left it, money till it's spent, your wife till she's joined a woman's club, nor Old Glory till you see it hanging on a broomstick on the shanty of a consul in a foreign town.
She had become so thoroughly annealed into his life that she was like the air he breathed--necessary but scarcely noticed.
He seemed to be made of sunshine and blood-red tissue and clear weather.
I belong to no religion. My religion is love. Every heart is my temple.
Why must love always be accompanied--sooner or later--by sorrow and pain? Why not? Because pure bliss is for pure idiots.
Love is the most universal, the most tremendous and the most mystical of cosmic forces. Love is the primal and universal psychic energy. Love is a sacred reserve of energy; it is like the blood of spiritual evolution.
I know a man who, when he saw a woman of striking beauty, praised the Creator for her. The sight of her lit within him the love of God.
I want you to find the poor here, right in your own home first. And begin love there. Be that good news to your own people.
So dear I love him, that with him, all deaths I could endure, without him, live no life.
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