Don Marquis quotes:

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

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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

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

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

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

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

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.

Life is one damned kitten after another." Mehitabel the Alley Cat

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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

i have had my ups and downs but wotthehell wotthehell yesterday sceptres and crowns fried oysters and velvet gowns and today i herd with bums but wotthehell wotthehell i wake the world from sleep as i caper and sing and leap when i sing my wild free tune wotthehell wotthehell under the blear eyed moon i am pelted with cast off shoon but wotthehell wotthehell

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.

From 'the lesson of the moth': and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himself

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

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

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

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

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.

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

the high cost of living isnt so bad if you dont have to pay for it

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!

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

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

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

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

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

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

Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes

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

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

you want to knowwhether i believe in ghostsof course i do not believe in themif you had knownas many of them as i haveyou would notbelieve in them either

Not every woman in old slippers can manage to look like Cinderella

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.

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

It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

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

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

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.

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.

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

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.

I would rather start a family than finish one.

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

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

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.

Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue

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

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

Vibrations are the key to everything. Atoms used to be, but atoms have quite gone out.

I love you as New Englanders love pie!

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

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.

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

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.

Old godheads sink in space and drown Their arks like foundered galleons sucked down.

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.

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.

It has been my observation and experience, and that of my family, that nothing human works out well.

Most of the people living in New York have come here from the far to try to make enough money to go back to the farm

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... We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age.

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

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

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

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

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

What man calls civilization always results in deserts.

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

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

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.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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.

You want to know whether I believe in ghosts? Of course I do not believe in them. If you had known as many of them as I have, you would not believe in them either.

A little while with grief and laughter, And then the day will close; The shadows gather ... what comes after No man knows.

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

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

Life's too damn funny for me to explain.