Quotes By Don Marquis

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

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

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

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

I would rather start a family than finish one.

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

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

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

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.

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

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

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

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.

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

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

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

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

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

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