Christopher Morley Quotes

Poetry is like an unexpected noise in the night: the creak of a door, a footstep on the porch, the soft scuffle of a moth against the screen, which rouses every sense to an instant alert. So comes poetry to the drowsy mind, which startles a moment, wonders, and returns to sleep.

Overhead the night was a superb arch of clear frost, sifted with stars.

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

I used to regard dish-washing merely as an ignoble chore, a kind of hateful discipline which had to be undergone with knitted brow and brazen fortitude. When my wife went away the first time, I erected a reading stand and an electric light over the sink, and used to read while my hands went automatically through base gestures of purification.

"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!

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversations as a dog does

Very often human beings don't become available for the purposes of art until they have shaken off some of their dogged, self-preserving sanity.

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.
-Christopher Morley

La notte ha una mistica affinità con la letteratura.

Quando si strappano tutte le fibre della civiltà è un lavoro lento quello di ricucirle insieme. Vede quei bambini per la strada che vanno a scuola? La pace è nelle loro mani. Se a scuola viene loro insegnato che la guerra è il più odioso flagello cui possa anda soggetta l'umanità, che imbratta e deforma ogni amabile occupazione dello spirito mortale, allora si potrà avere qualche speranza per il futuro.

That's the kind of thing that will wake you up in the middle of the night. I don't want to have a night with any middle

That's when a woman finds herself — when she's in love. I don't care if she is old or fat or homely or prosy. She feels that little flutter under her ribs and she drops from the tree like a ripe plum.

...but if you're smart you don't hold up your hand in class and ask to be called on.

Life, as parents know, can be supported on very little sleep.

There are fashions in saying things just as there are fashions in clothes. You wear what other people are wearing not so much because it's attractive but so as not to be conspicuous; so you can go on bind yourself underneath without being noticed too much.