Quotes from Christopher Morley

He had no responsibilities, not even a motor car, for his tastes were surprisingly simple. If he happened to be spending an evening at the country club, and a rainstorm came down, he did not worry about getting home. He would sit by the fire and chuckle to see the married members creep away one by one. He would get out his pipe and sleep that night at the club, after telephoning Fuji not to sit up for him.

I have heard laughter, and I think it is the laughter of God." The congregation stirred a little, with polite uneasiness. This was not quite the sort of thing to which they were accustomed. "Why should God laugh? I think it is because He sees that very often, when we pretend to be worshipping Him, we are really worshipping and gratifying ourselves.

It's spring," Mike said. "Oh, yes, of course, jolly old spring!" said Gissing, as though this was something he had known all along, and had just forgotten for the moment. But he didn't know. This was his first spring, for he was only ten months old.

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.

Sometimes I thought Truth had vanished from the earth," he cried bitterly. "Like everything else, it was rationed by the governments.

By and bye he wrote two letters. One was to a bookseller in the city, asking him to send (at once) one copy of Dr. Holt's book on the Care and Feeding of Children, and a well-illustrated edition of Mother Goose. The other was to Mr. Poodle, asking him to fix a date for the christening of Mr. Gissing's three small nephews, who had come to live with him.

Are you signalling any one?" he asked. "No one in particular. I thought it looked better to have a few flags about." "I daresay you're right. But better take them down if you speak a ship. They're rather confusing." "Confusing? I thought they were just to brighten things up." "You have two different signals up. They read, Bubonic plague, give me a wide berth. Am coming to your assistance.

There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Read, every day, something no one else is reading. Think, every day, something no one else is thinking. Do, every day, something no one else would be silly enough to do. It is bad for the mind to be always part of unanimity.

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.

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

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

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

High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.

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

When you sell a man a book you don't sell him just twelve ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life. Love and friendship and humour and ships at sea by night - there's all heaven and earth in a book, a real book I mean.

Printer's ink has been running a race against gunpowder these many, many years. Ink is handicapped, in a way, because you can blow up a man with gunpowder in half a second, while it may take twenty years to blow him up with a book. But the gunpowder destroys itself along with its victim, while a book can keep on exploding for centuries.

The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking.

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.

The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.

There is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.

There's no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.

Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it

Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.