Christopher Morley Quotes

Suppose someone tried to write your biography. What nonsense! How much would he know? Would he know what you thought when you looked in the subway slot-machine? How brutally you spoke when you were angry? How Nature rode you with a busy spur? How you fell on your knees late at night?

Wars are won in the mind before they can be won on the field.

What absurd victims of contrary desires we are! If a man is settled in one place he yearns to wander; when he wanders he yearns to have a home. And yet how bestial is content — all the great things in life are done by discontented people.

I went to the theatre with the author of a successful play. He insisted on explaining everything. He told me what to watch, the details of the direction, the errors of the property man, the foibles of the star. He anticipated all of my surprises and ruined the evening. Never again! And mark you, the greatest author of all made no such mistake.

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.

...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.

You know at once, if you are clairvoyant in these matters (libre-voyant, one might say), when you have met your book. You may dally and evade, you may go on about your affairs, but the paragraph of prose your eye fell upon, or the snatch of verses, or perhaps only the spirit and flavour of the volume, more divined than reasonably noted, will follow you.

It always seemed to me that [Henry James] had a kind of rush of words to the head and never stopped to sort them out properly.

Heavy hearts, like heavy clouds in the sky, are best relieved by the letting of a little water.

For paradise in the world to come is uncertain, but there is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven we inhabit when we read a good book.

A girl of 19 doesn't react towards things. She explodes.

"He pushed through the bushes. In a little hollow were three small puppies, whining faintly. They were cold and draggled with mud. Someone had left them there, evidently, to perish. They were huddled close together; their eyes, a cloudy unspeculative blue, were only just opened. "This is gruesome," said Gissing, pretending to be shocked."

It's a good thing to turn your mind upside down now and then, like an hour-glass, to let the particles run the other way.

All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful, but the beauty is grim.