Don Marquis Quotes

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

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

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

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

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

personally my ambition is to get my time as a cockroach shortened for good behavior and be promoted to a revenue officer it is not much of a step up but i am humble

Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.

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

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.

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

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

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

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

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

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

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

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

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

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

Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and write ribald songs against organized society... We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age.

I would rather start a family than finish one.

Too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of minor irritation they are able to cause to greater personalities than themselves.

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

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

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

I once heard the survivors of a colony of ants that had been partially obliterated by a cow's foot seriously debating the intention of the gods towards their civilization.

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

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

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

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue

There is bound to be a certain amount of trouble running any country. If you are president, the trouble happens to you. But if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so that most of the trouble happens to other people.

It wont be long now it wont be long man is making deserts of the earth it wont be long now before man will have used it up so that nothing but ants and centipedes and scorpions can find a living on it.

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 takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

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

Yes, he's got all them different kinds of thoroughbred blood in him, and he's got other kinds you ain't mentioned and that you ain't slick enough to see.

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

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

I do not see why men sheould be so proud insects have the more ancient lineage according to the scientists insects were insects when man was only a burbling whatisit.

From 'the lesson of the moth': and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself

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

Insects have their own point of view about civilization a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat.

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

If a child shows himself incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind.

I have often noticed that ancestors never boast of the descendants who boast of ancestors. I would rather start a family than finish one. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

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