Don Marquis Quotes

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.

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

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

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

It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

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

If the world were not so full of people, and most of them did not have to work so hard, there would be more time for them to get out and lie on the grass, and there would be more grass for them to lie on.

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

There was once a Hindu sage, who sat down on the banks of the Ganges and thought for seventy years about the millennium. Just as he arrived at the solution and was putting it into verse, a mosquito stung him and he forgot it again at once.

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

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

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

What man calls civilization always results in deserts.

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.

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

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.

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

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.

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

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

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

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter it is better to be happy for a moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while

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

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

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.

I love you as New Englanders love pie!

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.

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.

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

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.

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

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

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.

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

This is another day! Are its eyes blurred with maudlin grief for any wasted past? A thousand thousand failures shall not daunt! Let dust clasp dust, death, death; I am alive!

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

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue

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