Christopher Morley

Christopher Morley was an American journalist, novelist, poet, and playwright.

Sourced

• "Lord!" he said, "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. Jiminy! If I were the baker or the butcher or the broom huckster, people would run to the gate when I came by — just waiting for my stuff. And here I go loaded with everlasting salvation — yes, ma'am, salvation for their little, stunted minds — and it's hard to make 'em see it. That's what makes it worth while — I'm doing something that nobody else from Nazareth, Maine, to Walla Walla, Washington, has ever thought of. It's a new field, but by the bones of Whitman, it's worth while. That's what this country needs — more books!"
  • Parnassus on Wheels (1917)

• 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.
  • The Haunted Bookshop (1919)

• 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 Haunted Bookshop (1919)

• The most interesting persons are always those who have nothing special to do: children, nurses, policemen and actors at 11 o'clock in the morning.
  • Travels in Philadelphia (1920)

• Philadelphia was the first city to foresee the advantages of a Federal constitution and oatmeal as a breakfast food.
  • Travels in Philadelphia (1920)

• Happiness is surely the best teacher of good manners: only the unhappy are churlish in deportment.
  • Where the Blue Begins (1922)

• There is only one success,... to be able to spend your life in your own way.
  • Where the Blue Begins (1922)

In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.
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Category: Beauty Author: Christopher Morley

The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.
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Category: Bicycling Author: Christopher Morley

Lord! when you sell a man a book you don't sell 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.
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Category: Books and Reading Author: Christopher Morley

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

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Category: Childhood Author: Christopher Morley

We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up.
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Category: Children Author: Christopher Morley
All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.
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Category: Cities Author: Christopher Morley

High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.
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Category: Clothing Author: Christopher Morley

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.
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Category: Conformity Author: Christopher Morley

Dancing is wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
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Category: Dancing Author: Christopher Morley

Dancing is wonderful training for girls, it's the first way you learn to guess what a man is going to do before he does it.
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Category: Dancing Author: Christopher Morley

Unsourced

• A man who has never made a woman angry is a failure in life.

• April prepares her green traffic light, and the world thinks GO!

• Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.

• My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated, but not signed.

• No man is lonely while eating spaghetti — it requires too much attention.

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

• 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.