4 Quotes & Sayings By E Norman Torry

E. Norman Torry was born in Boston, Massachusetts on May 13, 1922. His grandfather was a well-known Boston poet and his father a noted economist. Torry attended public schools in Dorchester and attended the University of Pennsylvania from 1938-1942 Read more

In 1942, while serving in the United States Army Air Force, Torry worked as a news reporter for the Army's Armed Forces Radio Service (AFRS). In 1946 Torry opened his first bank branch in an attic at his home in Cambridge, Massachusetts. In 1948, Torry began selling insurance policies for Prudential Insurance Company at his bank branch.

In 1950 he sold his bank, and established E. Norman Torry & Co., Inc., a private investment firm which served as a source of capital for a number of early stage companies, including DEC and RotoVision. In 1955 Torry started investing in real estate and mortgage backed securities through his company, which he renamed The Torry Corporation.

In 1972, the company was sold to General Re Corporation for $149 million in stock and cash. Torry retired from active management of The Torry Corporation in 1980, but remained Chairman until 1986.

1
A library should fill our leisure with adventure. It is a refuge from the commonplace and the dull, a sanctuary where all the trials, the tribulations, and the boredoms of the outer world are forbidden and where such an evil thing as a tax-collector may be forgotten and, peradventure, forgiven. E. Norman Torry
2
A fig for your precious society with its bridge parties, its inane chatter, its cheap mentality; its dances and vulgar banquets; its snobbery and cheap pretension. The humblest library can show you upon a single shelf better society and far more select company than all the drawing-rooms of Europe, America, and South Africa. E. Norman Torry
3
After all, when you come across the word prothalamium and find it means a preliminary nuptial song and a yaffle is a green woodpecker-well, I ask you! You cannot let matters rest there-or can you? Peradventure you will develop into lexicomaniacs. E. Norman Torry