Christopher Morley Quotes
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They go in [to the library] not because they need any certain volume but because they feel that there may be some book that needs them.
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There are certain people whom one feels almost inclined to urge to hurry up and die so that their letters can be published.
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No one appreciates the very special genius of your conversation as the dog does.
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In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.
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How womanly it is to ask the unanswerable at the moment impossible.
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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.
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The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people.
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The world has been printing books for 450 years, and yet gunpowder still has a wider circulation. Never mind! Printer's ink is the greater explosive: it will win.
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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.
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When Abraham Lincoln was murdered The one thing that interested Matthew Arnold Was that the assassin shouted in Latin As he lept on the stage This convinced Matthew There was still hope for America.
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The trouble with wedlock is that there's not enough wed and too much lock.
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Blessed is he who has never been tempted; for he knows not the frailty of his rectitude.
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Everybody thinks of others as being excessively human, with all the frailties and crotchets appertaining to that curious condition. But each of us also seems to regard himself as existing on a detached plane of observation, exempt (save in moments of avid crisis) from the strange whims of humanity en masse.
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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.
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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!
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My theology, briefly, is that the universe was dictated but not signed.
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The censure of a dog is something no man can stand.
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Only the sinner has the right to preach.
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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.
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Dancing is a 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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Beauty is ever to the lonely mind a shadow fleeting; she is never plain. She is a visitor who leaves behind the gift of grief, the souvenir of pain.
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The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.
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Never write up your diary on the day itself, for it takes longer than that to know what happened.
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From now until the end of time no one else will ever see life with my eyes, and I mean to make the best of my chance.
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Act like you expect to get into the end zone.
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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.
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The evening papers print what they do and get away with it because by afternoon the human mind is ruined anyhow.
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Words are a commodity in which there is never any slump.
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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.
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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.
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