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.”

“That's when a woman finds herself--when she's in love. I don't care if she is old or fat or homely or prosy. She feels that little flutter under her ribs and she drops from the tree like a ripe plum.”

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

“There's no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”

“The fact that Holmes had earlier lodgings in Montague Street (alongside the British Museum) is forgotten. That was before Watson and we must have Watson too.”

“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.”

“We’ve had bad luck with our kids – they’ve all grown up.”

“A doctor is advertised by the bodies he cures. My business is advertised by the minds I stimulate. And let me tell you that the book business is different from other trades. People don't know they want books. I can see just by looking at you that your mind is ill for lack of books but you are blissfully unaware of it!”

“New York is Babylon : Brooklyn is the truly Holy City.New York is the city of envy, office work, and hustle;Brooklyn is the region of homes and happiness….There is no hope for New Yorkers, for their glory inTheir skyscraping sins; but in Brooklyn there is the wisdom of the lowly.”

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

“Cherish all your happy moments: they make a fine cushion for old age.”

“...but if you're smart you don't hold up your hand in class and ask to be called on.”

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

“The misfortunes hardest to bear are these which never came.”

“Do you know why people are reading more books now than ever before? Because the terrific catastrophe of the war has made them realize that their minds are ill. The world was suffering from all sorts of mental fevers and aches and disorders, and never knew it. Now our mental pangs are only too manifest. We are all reading, hungrily, hastily, trying to find out—after the trouble is over—what was the matter with our minds. ”

“ON THE RETURN OF A BOOKLENT TO A FRIEND I GIVE humble and hearty thanks for the safe return of this book which having endured the perils of my friend's bookcase, and the bookcases of my friend's friends, now returns to me in reasonably good condition. I GIVE humble and hearty thanks that my friend did not see fit to give this book to his infant as a plaything, nor use it as an ash-tray for his burning cigar, nor as a teething-ring for his mastiff. WHEN I lent this book I deemed it as lost: I was resigned to the bitterness of the long parting: I never thought to look upon its pages again. BUT NOW that my book is come back to me, I rejoice and am exceeding glad! Bring hither the fatted morocco and let us rebind the volume and set it on the shelf of honour: for this my book was lent, and is returned again. PRESENTLY, therefore, I may return some of the books that I myself have borrowed.”

“Mr. Gilbert had the earnest mania for self-improvement which has blighted the lives of so many young men.”

“Life's a lot different from what people pretend. That's why pretending is fun. I used to think it was some special wickedness of my own that made such queer things happen. Now I'm beginning to guess that everybody's like that.”

“Humor is perhaps a sense of intellectual perspective: an awareness that some things are really important, others not; and that the two kinds are most oddly jumbled in everyday affairs. ”

“High heels were invented by a woman who had been kissed on the forehead.”

“Man is unconquerable because he can make even his helplessness so entertaining. His motto seems to be "Even though He slay me, yet will I make fun of Him!”

“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.”

“I wish there could be an international peaceconference of booksellers, for (you will smile at this) my ownconviction is that the future happiness of the world depends in nosmall measure on them and on the librarians. ”

“Life is a foreign language; all men mispronounce it”

“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.”

“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. ”

“If we discovered that we had only five minutes left to say all that we wanted to say, every telephone booth would be occupied by people calling other people to stammer that they loved them.”

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

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

“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.”

“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. ”

“Big shots are just little shots that keep shooting.”

“The bicycle, the bicycle surely, should always be the vehicle of novelists and poets.”

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

“The real purpose of books is to trap the mind into doing its own thinking. ”

“The courage of the poet is to keep ajar the door that leads into madness.”

“That's what this country needs -- more books!”

“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.”

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

“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.”

“I went to the theatre with the author of a successful play. He insisted on explaining everything. He told me what to watch, the details of the direction, the errors of the property man, the foibles of the star. He anticipated all of my surprises and ruined the evening. Never again! And mark you, the greatest author of all made no such mistake.”

“There are three ingredients to the good life; learning, earning, and yearning.”

“The everlasting lure of round-the-corner, how fascinating it is.”

“No man is lonely while eating spaghetti:it requires so much attention.”

“There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.”