Don Marquis Quotes

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

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

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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

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