Quotes by 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
A hypocrite is a person who - but who isn't?
– Don Marquis
A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.
– Don Marquis
A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.
– Don Marquis
Age is not a particularly interesting subject. Anyone can get old. All you have to do is live long enough.
– Don Marquis
An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
– Don Marquis
Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.
– Don Marquis
Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.
– Don Marquis
Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.
– Don Marquis
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.
– 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
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
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.
– Don Marquis
In order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child's parent or grandparent.
– 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
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.
– 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
Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.
– 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
Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.
– Don Marquis
Successful people are the ones who think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
– Don Marquis
There is luxury in self-reproach. When we blame ourselves, we feel no one else has a right to blame us.
– Don Marquis
You know how in high school you do these plays and people come up after the show and they're really excited for you? Well, that's what's happening to me right now.
– 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 a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?'
– 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
There is nothing so habit-forming as money.
– Don Marquis
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
– Don Marquis
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
– Don Marquis
One of the most important things to remember about infant care is: don't change diapers in midstream.
– Don Marquis
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.
– Don Marquis
An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
– Don Marquis