Quotes from Christopher Morley

As far as I can see, a man who's fond of books never need starve!

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.

Human beings pay very little attention to what is told them unless they know something about it already.

Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

I have always suffered from the feeling that it's better to read a good book than to write a poor one; and I've done so much mixed reading in my time that my mind is full of echoes and voices of better men. But this book I'm worrying about now really deserves to be written, I think, for it has a message of its own.

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.

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's funny how we hate to face realities. I knew a commuter once who rode in town every day on the 8.13. But he used to call it the 7.73. He said it made him feel more virtuous.

It's in books that most of us learn how splendidly worth-while life is.

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

Oh, sir, I'm glad you got home in time for Christmas," she said. "The children were counting on it. Did you have a successful trip, sir?" "Every trip is successful when you get home again," said Gissing.

Talkers never write. They go on talking." There

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

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

But, as our friend Samuel Butler says, he that is stupid in little will also be stupid in much.

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

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.

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 continually be part of unanimity.

Non esiste in astratto un buon libro: un libro è buono soltanto quando appaga una fame umana, o confuta qualche umano errore.

Night, I have discovered, has a faintly bitter taste, caused by its large ingredient of Un-attained Possibility.

People need books, but they don't know they need them. Generally they are not aware that the books they need are in existence. - Roger Mifflin

Those who have bound themselves are only too eager to see the chains on others.

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 is so easy to let life go by us in its swift amusing course, that sometimes it hardly seems worthwhile to attempt any bold strokes for truth. Truth, of course, does not need assistance; it can afford to ignore our errors. But in this quiet place, among the whisper of the trees, I seem to have heard a disconcerning sound. I have heard laughter, and I think it is the laughter of God.