Christopher Morley Quotes

American journalist, novelist, essayist and poet (1890–1957)

Christopher Morley (5 May 1890 - 28 March 1957) was an American journalist, novelist, poet, and playwright.

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Alternative Names: Christopher Darlington Morley

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Although he kept late hours, Roger Mifflin was a prompt riser. It is only the very young who find satisfaction in lying abed in the morning. Those who approach the term of the fifth decade are sensitively aware of the fluency of life, and have no taste to squander it among the blankets.

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

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.

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.

The people in books become more real to you than any one in actual life.

I think reading a good book makes one modest. When you see the marvelous insight into human nature which a truly great book shows, it is bound to make you feel small — like looking at the Dipper on a clear night, or seeing the winter sunrise when you go out to collect the morning eggs. And anything that makes you feel small is mighty good for 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.

That's what this country needs — more books!

In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.

"In his favourite hymns he had a tendency to forget himself and let go: his vigorous tenor rang lustily. Then he realized that the backs of people's heads looked surprised. The children could not be kept quiet unless they stood up on the pews. Mr. Poodle preached rather a long sermon, and Yelpers, toward twelve-thirty, remarked in a clear tone of interested inquiry, "What time does God have dinner?

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

No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

He was willing to wait until the last dollar was broken: in the meantime he was content. You never know the soul of a city, he said, until you are down on your luck. Now, he felt, he had been here long enough to understand her.

Sometimes I thought Truth had vanished from the earth,” he cried bitterly. “Like everything else, it was rationed by the governments. I taught myself to disbelieve half of what I read in the papers.