Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

I would rather start a family than finish one.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

— Don Marquis

Some persons are likable in spite of their unswerving integrity.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.

— Don Marquis

An idea that is not dangerous is unworthy of being called an idea at all.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

now and then there is a person born who is so unlucky that he runs into accidents which started out to happen to somebody else.

— Don Marquis

There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

Science has always been too dignified to invent a good backscratcher.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

If you make people think they're thinking they'll love you: but if you really make them think, they'll hate you.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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.

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

I never think when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.

— Don Marquis

ihave often noticed thatancestors never boastof the descendants who boastof ancestors i wouldrather start a family thanfinish one blood will tell but oftenit tells too much

— Don Marquis

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; strapped to one arm of our chair will be a forty-five calibre revolver, and we shall shoot out the lights when we want to go to sleep, instead of turning them off; when we want air we shall throw a silver candlestick through the front window and be damned to it; we shall address public meetings in a vein of jocund malice. We shall but we dont wish to make any one envious of the good time that is coming to us We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age.

— Don Marquis

what man calls civilizationalways results in desertsman is never on the squarehe uses up the fat and greenery of the eartheach generation wastes a little moreof the future with greed and lust for riches

— Don Marquis