Christopher Morley Quotes

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 Big 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.

There are three ingredients in the good life: learning, earning, and yearning. A man should be learning as he goes; and he should be earning bread for himself and others; and he should be yearning, too: yearning to know the unknowable.

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. A book that is good for me would very likely be punk for you.

I wish there could be an international peace
conference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my own
conviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in no
small measure on them and on the librarians.

Summer was over, and we were no longer young, but there were great things before us.

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

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

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

There are three ingredients to the good life; learning, earning, and yearning.

There is only one success: to be able to spend life in your own way and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.

The human mind appears suddenly and inexplicably out of some unknown and unimaginable void. It passes half its known life in the mental chaos of sleep. Even when awake it is a victim of its own ill-adjustment, of disease, of age, of external suggestion, of nature's compulsions; it doubts its own sensations and trusts only in instruments and averages.

Calling us men doesn't make us men. No creature on earth has a right to think himself a human being if he doesn't know at least one good book.

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.

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.

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