Love Quote by O. Henry

O. Henry takes a glittery cliche and punctures it with the pin he always keeps handy: appetite. "Love makes the world go 'round" belongs to greeting cards and parlor talk, a phrase that flatters the speaker for believing in something lofty. His deadpan correction - "the announcement lacks verification" - mimics the language of official reports, as if romance were a dubious claim in need of receipts. The joke lands because it treats sentimentality like bad journalism.

Then comes the pivot: "wind from the dinner horn". It's earthy, almost cartoonish, and that crudeness is the point. He yanks us from the abstract to the bodily, from metaphysics to the stomach. A dinner horn is also a working-class detail: not a dainty bell in an upscale dining room, but the blunt signal that food is ready, that labor pauses, that people move. O. Henry's America is full of strivers, hustlers, and small dramas where survival is the real plot engine. In that world, hunger is more reliable than romance.

The subtext isn't that love is fake; it's that our public language about love is performative, a social story we tell to make harsh realities feel more graceful. O. Henry's wit thrives on the gap between what society praises (idealized love) and what actually organizes daily life (need, routine, money, meals). It's cynicism with a warm pulse: he mocks the slogan, not the yearning behind it.