Don Marquis Quotes (67 Quotes)


    There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.

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

    Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

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

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


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

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

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

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

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

    He is so unlucky that he runs into accidents which start out to happen to somebody else.

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

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

    There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

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

    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 optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.

    I would rather start a family than finish one.

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

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

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

    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.

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

    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.


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

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

    Human wandering through the zoowhat do your cousins think of you.

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

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

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

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

    Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.

    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.

    Punctuality is one of the cardinal virtues. Always insist on it in your subordinates and dependents.

    Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

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

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

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

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

    Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

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

    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.

    It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

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

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

    I have noticed that when chickens quit quarreling over their food, they often find that there is enough for all of them. I wonder if it might not be the same with the human race.

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


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    Related Authors


    Virgil - Robert Frost - Emily Dickinson - Edgar Allan Poe - Rumi - Ovid - Octavio Paz - John Betjeman - Elizabeth Barrett Browning - Edmund Spenser


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