Don Marquis Quotes

For him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee- For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane.

A hypocrite is a person who - but who isn't?

I am never so happy aswhen I am broke, and lately I have been happy all the time. - Mehitabel the Cat

Nearly every night before I go to bed I ask myself, Have I vibrated in tune with the Infinite today, or have I failed?

A little while with grief and laughter, And then the day will close; The shadows gather ... what comes after No man knows.

An optimist is a man who has never had much experience.

My heart hath followed all my days Something I cannot name.

The trouble with the public is that there is too much of it; what we need in public is less quantity and more quality.

The most pleasant and useful persons are those who leave some of the problems of the universe for God to worry about.

We pay for the mistakes of our ancestors, and it seems only fair that they should leave us the money to pay with.

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday

Life is one damned kitten after another. Mehitabel the Alley Cat

A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.

Fishing: a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.

Vibrations are the key to everything. Atoms used to be, but atoms have quite gone out.

Every honorable man is forced to yield to blackmail once or twice in his life, just for the sake of keeping peace in the community.

I suppose the human race is doing the best it can but hells bells thats only an explanation its not an excuse.

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

If you want to get rich from writing, write the sort of thing that's read by persons who move their lips when they're reading to themselves.

It has been my observation and experience, and that of my family, that nothing human works out well.

Old godheads sink in space and drown Their arks like foundered galleons sucked down.

It is a cheering thought to think that God is on the side of the best digestion.

Persian pussy from over the sea demure and lazy and smug and fat none of your ribbons and bells for me ours is the zest of the alley cat

it s cheerio
my deario
that pulls a
lady through
exclamation point

Honesty is a good thing,
but it is not profitable
to its possessor unless
it is kept under control.

The high cost of living isnt so bad if you dont have to pay for it

Most of the people living in New York have come here from the far to try to make enough money to go back to the farm

By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing.

A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.

The art of newspaper paragraphing is to stroke a platitude until it purrs like an epigram.

Prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into

I would rather start a family than finish one.

Many a man spanks his children for things his own father should have spanked out of him.

A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.

No form of government matters nearly as much as the spirit and intelligence brought to the administration of any form of government.

A fierce unrest seethes at the core, of all existing things:, it was the eager wish to soar, that gave the gods their wings.

That stern and rockbound coast felt like an amateur when it saw how grim the puritans that landed on it were.

Censors are necessary, increasingly necessary, if America is to avoid having a vital literature.

There's a dance in the old dame yet.

A great many people who spend their time mourning over the brevity of life could make it seem longer if they did a little more work.

In all systems of theology the devil figures as a male person. Yes, it is women who keep the church going.

Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.

I look back on my life
and it seems to me to be
just one damned kitten
after another

Our is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

With regard to ghosts, while we have never believed in them, we have always been afraid of them.

One of the most important things to remember about infant care is: don't change diapers in midstream.

An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe it.

It would be a colorless world if each individual did not secretly believe himself superior to almost everyone else.

There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.

The female of all species are most dangerous when they appear to retreat.

The things that I can't have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can't, And what I have to do I hate.

My master is the same as god
when he thumps with his hand
people bring us hamburg steaks
at any eating stand pete s holiday

A certain alloy of expediency improves the gold of morality and makes it wear all the longer.

Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.

When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.

When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?

Of middle age the best that can be said is that a middle-aged person has likely learned how to have a little fun in spite of his troubles.

Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.

It is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beauty

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Not every woman in old slippers can manage to look like Cinderella

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.

In order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child's parent or grandparent.

I love you as New Englanders love pie!

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.

The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.

I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column.

An old stomach reforms more whiskey drinkers than a new resolve.

There is always a comforting thought in time of trouble when it is not our trouble.

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint'
-archy the cockroach

It s too great a
blow underlined
to a man apostrophe s
pride
to see a woman
influence other women
more than he can
himself

Just as soon as the uplifters get a country reformed it slips into a nose dive.

Successful people are the ones who think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.

He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country.

Life's too damn funny for me to explain.

An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.