92 Don Marquis Quotes

Don Marquis quotes

1. 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

2. dedicated to babs with babs knows what and babs knows why

3. the octopus's secret wish is not to be a formal fish he dreams that some time he may grow another set of legs or so and be a broadway music show

4. oh i should worry and fret death and i will coquette there s a dance in the old dame yet toujours gai toujours gai

5. procrastination is the art of keeping<up with yesterday

6. an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience

7. what in hell have i done to deserve all these kittens

8. dance mehitabel dance caper and shake a leg what little blood is left will fizz like wine in a keg

9. no insect likes human beings and if you think you can see why the only reason i tolerate you is because you seem less human to me than most of them

10. 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 man has oppressed us for a million years but he goes on steadily cutting the ground from under his own feet making deserts deserts deserts

11. what man calls civilization always results in deserts

12. men talk of money and industry of hard times and recoveries of finance and economics but the ants wait and the scorpions wait for while men talk they are making deserts all the time getting the world ready for the conquering ant drought and erosion and desert because men cannot learn

13. each generation wastes a little more of the future with greed and lust for riches

14. it wont be long now It won't be long till earth is barren as the moon and sapless as a mumbled bone

15. dear boss i relay this information without any fear that humanity will take warning and reform

16. it is a cheering thought to think that god is on the side of the best digestion

17. 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

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

19. i met a toad the other day by the name of warty bliggens he was sitting under a toadstool feeling contented he explained that when the cosmos was created that toadstool was especially planned for his personal shelter from sun and rain thought out and prepared for him

20. a little more conversation revealed that warty bliggens considers himself to be the center of the said universe the earth exists to grow toadstools for him to sit under the sun to give him light by day and the moon and wheeling constellations to make beautiful the night for the sake of warty bliggens

21. i asked him why is it that you are so greatly favored ask rather said warty bliggens what the universe has done to deserve me

22. a robin said to an angleworm as he ate him i am sorry but a bird has to live somehow the worm being slow witted could not gather his dissent into a wise crack and retort he was effectually swallowed before he could turn a phrase

23. demons and fishhooks he exclaimed i am losing my personal identity as a worm my individuality is melting away from me odds craw i am becoming part and parcel of this bloody robin so help me i am thinking like a robin and not like a worm any longer yes yes i even find myself agreeing that a robin must live i still do not understand with my mentality why a robin must live and yet i swoon into a condition of belief

24. amen said a beetle who had preceded him into the interior that is the way i feel myself is it not wonderful when one arrives at the place where he can give up his ambitions and resignedly nay even with gladness recognize that it is a far far better thing to be merged harmoniously in the cosmic all and this confortable situation in his midst so affected the marauding robin that he perched upon a blooming twig and sang until the blossoms shook with ecstacy he sang i have a good digestion and there is a god after all which i was wicked enough to doubt yesterday when it rained

25. breakfast breakfast i am full of breakfast and they are at breakfast in heaven they breakfast in heaven all s well with the world

26. how beautiful is the universe when something digestible meets with an eager digestion how sweet the embrace when atom rushes to the arms of waiting atom

27. well well boss there is something to be said for the lyric and imperial attitude believe that everything is for you until you discover that you are for it sing your faith in what you get to eat right up to the minute you are eaten for you are going to be eaten

28. there are more things twixt the vermiform appendix and nirvana than are dreamt of in thy philosophy horatio

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

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

31. 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

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

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

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

35. Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

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

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

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

39. Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

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

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

42. Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

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

44. How often when they find a sage, As sweet as Socrates or Plato; They hand him hemlock for his wage, Or bake him like a sweet potato!

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

46. I say that I am myself, but what is this Self of mine But a knot in the tangled skein of things where chance and change combine?

47. I would rather start a family than finish one.

48. Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

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

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

51. 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.

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

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

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

55. 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

56. 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.

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

58. Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

59. Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

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

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

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

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

64. Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.

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

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

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

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

69. There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

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

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

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

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

2. An optimist is the person who has never had any experience at all.

3. For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too; For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion, But is worthy some worship of mine; Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble, but open eyed.

4. 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.

5. 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.

6. An old stomach reforms more whiskey drinkers than a new resolve.

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

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

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

10. Give up the dream that Love may trick the fates To live again somewhere beyond the gleam Of dying stars, or shatter the strong gates Some god has builded high; give up the dream.

11. It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

12. 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.

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

14. 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.

15. Censors are necessary, increasingly necessary, if America is to avoid having a vital literature.

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

17. Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

18. I love you as New Englanders love pie!

19. As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds. And his gods they are shaped in his image and mirror his needs. And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, He clothes them with music and fire, Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, That he worships his own desire.

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