228 Quotes by Christopher Morley

A good book ought to have something simple about it. And, like Eve, it ought to come from somewhere near the third rib: there ought to be a heart beating in it. A story that’s all forehead doesn’t amount to much.

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.

A girl of 19 doesn’t react towards things. She explodes.

Talkers never write. They go on talking.” There.

For paradise in the world to come is uncertain, but there is indeed a heaven on this earth, a heaven which we inhabit when we read a good book.

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.

None of the neighbouring ladies would stand as godmother, for they were secretly dubious as to the children’s origin; so he had asked good Mrs. Spaniel to act in that capacity. She, a simple kindly creature, was much flattered, though certainly she can have understood very little of the symbolical rite. Gissing, filling out the form that Mr. Poodle had given him, had put down the names of an entirely imaginary brother and sister-in-law of his, “deceased,” whom he asserted as the parents.

New York, the nation’s thyroid gland.

He was a little weary of this just, charitable, consoling, hebdomadal God; this God who might be sufficiently honoured by a decorously memorized ritual. Yet was he too shallow?