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.

Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.

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

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

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.

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

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

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.

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.

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

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

I would rather start a family than finish one.

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.

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

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.

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.

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.

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue

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

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.

It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

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.

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

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.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

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

What man calls civilization always results in deserts.

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

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.

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.