All cities are mad: but the madness is gallant. All cities are beautiful: but the beauty is grim.
Interpretation
This quote reflects the paradoxical nature of cities, where chaos and beauty coexist in complex ways.
Christopher Morley's quote captures the duality of urban life, suggesting that while cities may exhibit chaotic behaviors ('madness'), there is something noble and brave about that fervor. Similarly, the beauty found in cities often comes with an underlying sense of melancholy, highlighting that what appears attractive can simultaneously carry a sense of sadness or harsh reality. This reflects the complexities of human experience in urban environments.
In practice
In a speech about urban development, one might quote Morley to emphasize the complexity of city life.
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.
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.
There is no mistaking a real book when one meets it. It is like falling in love.
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.
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.
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.
Non-violence means dialogue, using our language, the human language. Dialogue means compromise; respecting each other’s rights; in the spirit of reconciliation there is a real solution to conflict and disagreement. There is no hundred percent winner, no hundred percent loser—not that way but half-and-half. That is the practical way, the only way.
EXPLORING the world is one of the best ways of exploring the mind, and walking travels both terrains.
Men, as well as women, are much oftener led by their hearts than by their understandings.
People who give will never be poor.
I'll be darned!" said Douglas. "I never thought of that. That's brilliant! It's true. Old people never were children!" "And it's kind of sad," said Tom, sitting still."There's nothing we can do to help them.
Time starts out as a notion. But after you turn fifty, time is not a notion anymore but a fact that you start feeling clearly, and in a way, it pushes you to become present in the present.
Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.