Morris West Quotes

Australia, Novelist
April 26, 1916 – October, 9, 1999.

Morris Langlo West AO was an Australian novelist and playwright, best known for his novels The Devil's Advocate (1959), The Shoes of the Fisherman (1963) and The Clowns of God (1981). His books were published in 27 languages and sold more than 60 million copies worldwide. Each new book he wrote after he became an established writer sold more than one million copies.

Also known as Playwright

Well I travelled quite a lot in the east, and one of the things that impressed me greatly was the buddhist notion of the continuity of things, the wheel of life which is what we're talking about, the ever turning wheel.

Morris West
And I've always worked on the principle that if it interests me enough to write about it, then it must interest a lot of other people.

Morris West

He had fallen into the error of all liberals: the belief that men are prepared to reform themselves, that good will attracts good will, that truth has leavening virtue of its own.

Morris West
- Belief
- Errors
- Prepared
The fact is that the learning process goes on, and so long as the voices are not stilled and the singers go on singing some of it gets through.

Morris West
- Learning
- Process
- Singers
No man - prince, peasant, pope - has all the light, who says else is a mountebank. I claim no private lien on truth, only a liberty to seek it, prove it in debate, and to be wrong a thousand times to reach a single rightness. It is that liberty they fear. They want us to be driven to God like sheep, not running to him like lovers, shouting joy!

Morris West
- Running
- Liberty
- Debate
There are still things I want to do but they're not necessary for me to do. I'm not clinging to anything that I can't open my hands and let go.

Morris West
- Hands
- Letting
- Clinging
There was no cure for the human condition because every man read the present and plotted the future in the light of his own past.

Morris West
- Past
- Human
- Condition
In a longish life as a professional writer, I have heard a thousand masterpieces talked out over bars, restaurant tables and love seats. I have never seen one of them in print. Books must be written, not talked.

Morris West

None of us is guaranteed against failure or corruption of any kind; witness what's going on in the world in this moment, the follies of human nature and the failures of human nature.

Morris West
- Nature
- Moments
- Human
I look out this window and think this is a cosmos, this is a huge creation, this is one small corner of it. The trees and the birds and everything else and I am part of it. I didn't ask to be put here. I've been lucky finding myself here.

Morris West
- Thinking
- Nature
- Myself