Christopher Morley Quotes

68 Sourced Quotes

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

Christopher Morley
Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it.

Christopher Morley
There is only one success, he said to himself — to be able to spend your life in your own way, and not to give others absurd maddening claims upon it.

Christopher Morley
My theology, briefly,
Is that the Universe
Was Dictated
But not Signed.

Christopher Morley
I had a million questions to ask God: but when I met Him, they all fled my mind; and it didn't seem to matter.

Christopher Morley
There are a lot of people who must have the table laid in the usual fashion or they will not enjoy the dinner.

Christopher Morley
Truth is what every man sees lurking at the bottom of his own soul, like the oyster shell housewives put in the kitchen kettle to collect the lime from the water. By and by each man's iridescent oyster shell of Truth becomes coated with the lime of prejudice and hearsay.

Christopher Morley
Man makes a great fuss about this planet which is only a ballbearing in the hub of the universe.

Christopher Morley
A mind too proud to unbend over the small ridiculosa of life is as painful as a library with no trash in it.

Christopher Morley
It will be a shock to men when they realize that thoughts that were fast enough for today are not fast enough for tomorrow. But thinking tomorrow's thoughts today is one kind of future life.

Christopher Morley
The unluckiest insolvent in the world is the man whose expenditure of speech is too great for his income of ideas.

Christopher Morley
Poetry comes with anger, hunger and dismay; it does not often visit groups of citizens sitting down to be literary together, and would appal them if it did.

Christopher Morley
For after all, happiness (as the mathematicians might say) lies on a curve, and we approach it only by asymptote.

Christopher Morley
Animal crackers, and cocoa to drink That is the finest of suppers, I think When I'm grown up and can have what I please, I think I shall always insist upon these.

Christopher Morley
Perhaps this is an age when men think bravely of the human spirit; for surely they have a strange lust to lay it bare.

Christopher Morley
Truth and Beauty (perhaps Keats was wrong in identifying them: perhaps they have the relation of Wit and Humour, or Rain and Rainbow) are of interest only to hungry people. There are several kinds of hunger. If Socrates, Spinoza, and Santayana had had free access to a midnight icebox we would never have heard of them. Shall I be ashamed of my little mewing truths?... I ask to be forgiven: they are such tiny ones.

Christopher Morley
The greatest poem ever known Is one all poets have outgrown: The poetry, innate, untold, Of being only four years old.

Christopher Morley
America is still a government of the naive, for the naive, and by the naive. He who does not know this, nor relish it, has no inkling of the nature of his country.

Christopher Morley
The world, in its sheer exuberance of kindness, will try to bury the poet with warm and lovely human trivialities. It will even ask him to autograph books.

Christopher Morley
Blessed is the satirist; and blessed the ironist; blessed the witty scoffer, and blessed the sentimentalist; for each, having seen one spoke of the wheel, thinks to have seen all, and is content.

Christopher Morley
Be prepared for truth at all hours and in the most fantastic disguises. This is the only safety.

Christopher Morley
The little Plumpuppets are fairies of beds; They have nothing to do but watch sleepyheads; They turn down the sheets and they tuck you in tight, And dance on your pillow to wish you good night!

Christopher Morley
There is an innate decorum in man, and it is not fair to thrust Truth upon people when they don't expect it. Only the very generous are ready for Truth impromptu.

Christopher Morley
Sweep the pale hair, like wings, above the ears; Whittle the nose, and carve and bone the jaw; Blank the studying eyes, till human fears Eliminate in universal law. Slack the mortal shirt, stiffen the hands, Holding the dear old pipe, half-smoked, unlit — So, lovingly, we loose Orion's Bands And write equation with the Infinite.

Christopher Morley
Marriage is the square of a plus b In other words 22a + b + 2ab Where 2ab (of course) Are twins.

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

Christopher Morley
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.

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

Christopher Morley
We call a child's mind 'small' simply by habit; perhaps it is larger than ours is, for it can take in almost anything without effort.

Christopher Morley
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.

Christopher Morley