Christopher Morley

“In every man's heart there is a secret nerve that answers to the vibrations of beauty.”

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

“God made man merely to hear some praise of what he'd done on those Five Days.”

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love, and like that colossal adventure it is an experience of great social import. Even as the tranced swain, the booklover yearns to tell others of his bliss. He writes letters about it, adds it to the postscript of all manner of communications, intrudes it into telephone messages, and insists on his friends writing down the title of the find. Like the simple-hearted betrothed, once certain of his conquest, “I want you to love her, too!” It is a jealous passion also. He feels a little indignant if he finds that any one else has discovered the book, too.”

“Suppose someone tried to write your biography. What nonsense! How much would he know? Would he know what you thought when you looked in the subway slot-machine? How brutally you spoke when you were angry? How Nature rode you with a busy spur? How you fell on your knees late at night?”

“When you sell a man a book, you don't sell him 12 ounces of paper and ink and glue - you sell him a whole new life.”

“A human being: an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.”

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

“Lots of times you have to pretend to join a parade in which you're not really interested in order to get where you're going.”

“New York, the nation's thyroid gland.”

“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.”

“We've had bad luck with our kids - they've all grown up.”

“Man, an ingenious assembly of portable plumbing.”

“Act like you expect to get into the end zone.”

“When 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.”

“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.”

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

“If you have to keep reminding yourself of a thing, perhaps it isn't so.”

“Big shots are only little shots who keep shooting.”

“The enemies of the future are always the very nicest people.”