Christopher Morley Quotes

God made man merely to hear some praise of what he'd done on those Five Days.

When Abraham Lincoln was murdered The one thing that interested Matthew Arnold Was that the assassin shouted in Latin As he lept on the stage This convinced Matthew There was still hope for America.

The most interesting persons are always those who have nothing special to do: children, nurses, policemen and actors at 11 o'clock in the morning.

Truth is the ricochet of a prejudice bouncing off a fact.

Words are a commodity in which there is never any slump.

The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds; They have nothing to do but watch sleepyheads; They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight, And dance on your pillow to wish you good night!

Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did.

Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only the unhappy are churlish in deportment.

A mind too proud to unbend over the small ridiculosa of life is as painful as a library with no trash in it.

A critic is a gong at a railroad crossing clanging loudly and vainly as the train goes by.

Never write up your diary on the day itself, for it takes longer than that to know what happened.

Blessed is the satirist; and blessed the ironist; blessed the witty scoffer, and blessed the sentimentalist; for each, having seen one spoke of the wheel, thinks to have seen all, and is content.

How womanly it is to ask the unanswerable at the moment impossible.

Between ourselves, there is no such thing, abstractly, as a 'good' book. A book is 'good' only when it meets some human hunger or refutes some human error.

Be prepared for truth at all hours and in the most fantastic disguises. This is the only safety.

They go in [to the library] not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them.

Only the sinner has the right to preach.

Man is unconquerable because he can make even his helplessness so entertaining. His motto seems to be "Even though He slay me, yet will I make fun of Him!

It will be a shock to men when they realize that thoughts that were fast enough for today are not fast enough for tomorrow. But thinking tomorrow's thoughts today is one kind of future life.

Fifty percent of the world are women, yet they always seem a novelty.

Beware of the conversationalist who adds "in other words." He is merely starting afresh.

The evening papers print what they do and get away with it because by afternoon the human mind is ruined anyhow.

There are certain people whom one feels almost inclined to urge to hurry up and die so that their letters can be published.

The greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old.

There are a lot of people who must have the table laid in the usual fashion or they will not enjoy the dinner.

The everlasting lure of round-the-corner, how fascinating it is.

All students can learn.

My prayer is that what we have gone through [World War One] will startle the world into some new realization of the sanctity of life, animal as well as human.

That's what this country needs -- more books!

Living in a bookshop is like living in a warehouse of explosives. Those shelves are ranked with the most furious combustibles in the world--the brains of men.

From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the best of my chance.

Religion is an attempt, a noble attempt, to suggest in human terms more-than-human realities.

Blessed is he who has never been tempted; for he knows not the frailty of his rectitude.

Any man worth his salt has by the time he is forty-five accumulated a crown of thorns, and the problem is to learn to wear it over one ear.

The man who never in his life Has washed the dishes with his wife Or polished up the silver plate - He still is largely celibate.

The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas.

Man makes a great fuss about this planet which is only a ballbearing in the hub of the universe.

The world, in its sheer exuberance of kindness, will try to bury the poet with warm and lovely human trivialities. It will even ask him to autograph books.

Perhaps this is an age when men think bravely of the human spirit; for surely they have a strange lust to lay it bare.

Being in a hurry seems so fiercely important when you yourself are the hurrier and so comically ludicrous when it is someone else.

There is an innate decorum in man, and it is not fair to thrust Truth upon people when they don't expect it. Only the very generous are ready for Truth impromptu.

We visit bookshops not so often to buy any one special book, but rather to rediscover, in the happier and more expressive words of others, our own encumbered soul.

There is only one success-to be able to spend life in your own way.

If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.

When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.

We’ve had bad luck with our kids – they’ve all grown up.

No man is lonely while eating spaghetti:it requires so much attention.

Night, I have discovered, has a faintly bitter taste, caused by its large ingredient of Un-attained Possibility.

There is only one success — to be able to spend your life in your own way.

They go in not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them.