Don Marquis Quotes

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
The successful people are the ones who think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
Don Marquis
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!
Don Marquis
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
Don Marquis
An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
Don Marquis
Friends I beg you do not shirk your daily task of indolence.
Don Marquis
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!
Don Marquis
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose-petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
Don Marquis
An optimist is a guy that has never had much experience.
Don Marquis
Friends I beg you do not shirk your daily task of indolence.
Don Marquis
Ideas pull the trigger but instinct loads the gun.
Don Marquis
Happiness comes fleetingly now and then to those who have learned to do without it and to them only.
Don Marquis
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.
Don Marquis
Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.
Don Marquis
Happiness comes fleetingly now and then To those who have learned to do without it And to them only.
Don Marquis
The goal of all civilization all religious thought and all that sort of thing is simply to have a good time. But man gets so solemn over the process that he forgets the end.
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
There is nothing we like to see so much as the gleam of pleasure in a person's eye when he feels that we have sympathized with him understood him interested ourself in his welfare. At these moments something fine and spiritual passes between two friends. These moments are the moments worth living.
Don Marquis
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!
Don Marquis
Pity the meek for they shall inherit the earth.
Don Marquis
It is better to be happy for the moment and be burned up with beauty than to live a long time and be bored all the while.
Don Marquis
In order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child's parent or grandparent.
Don Marquis
my master is the same as godwhen he thumps with his handpeople bring us hamburg steaksat any eating stand "pete s holiday
Don Marquis
An idea isn't responsible for the people who believe in it.
Don Marquis
they thought they were heroes when they were only cinders in the eye of humanity too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of irritation they are able to cause greater personalities than themselves
Don Marquis
A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimist.
Don Marquis
justice...is not inherent in the universe and what man has put there he uses when he uses it at all strictly for his own purposes the world is so sad that the only way to live with it is to laugh at it
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
it wont be long now it wont be longman is making deserts of the earthit wont be long nowbefore man will have used it upso that nothing but antsand centipedes and scorpionscan find a living on it....what man calls civilizationalways results in deserts....men talk of money and industryof hard times and recoveriesof finance and economicsbut the ants wait and the scorpions waitfor while men talk they are making deserts all the timegetting the world ready for the conquering antdrought and erosion and desertbecause men cannot learn....it wont be long now it wont be longtill earth is barren as the moonand sapless as a mumbled bone
Don Marquis
An optimist is a man who has never had much experience.
Don Marquis
Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.
Don Marquis
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
Don Marquis
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.
Don Marquis
Every honorable man is forced to yield to blackmail once or twice in his life, just for the sake of keeping peace in the community.
Don Marquis
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: 'Whose?
Don Marquis
fire is beautifuland we know that if we gettoo close it will kill usbut what does that matterit is better to be happy for a momentand be burned up with beautythan to live a long timeand be bored all the while
Don Marquis
With regard to ghosts, while we have never believed in them, we have always been afraid of them.
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
i have had my ups and downsbut wotthehell wotthehellyesterday sceptres and crownsfried oysters and velvet gownsand today i herd with bumsbut wotthehell wotthehelli wake the world from sleepas i caper and sing and leapwhen i sing my wild free tunewotthehell wotthehellunder the blear eyed mooni am pelted with cast off shoonbut wotthehell wotthehell
Don Marquis
Publishing a book of poetry is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
Don Marquis
a spider and a flyi heard a spiderand a fly arguingwait said the flydo not eat mei serve a great purposein the worldyou will have toshow me said the spideri scurry aroundgutters and sewersand garbage canssaid the fly and gatherup the germs oftyphoid influenzaand pneumonia on my feetand wingsthen i carry these germsinto households of menand give them diseasesall the people whohave lived the rightsort of life recoverfrom the diseasesand the old soaks whohave weakened their systemswith liquor and iniquitysuccumb it is my missionto help rid the worldof these wicked personsi am a vessel of righteousnessscattering seeds of justiceand serving the noblest usesit is true said the spiderthat you are moreuseful in a ploddingmaterial sort of waythan i am but i do notserve the utilitarian deitiesi serve the gods of beautylook at the gossamer websi weave they float in the sunlike filaments of songif you get what i meani do not work at anythingi play all the timei am busy with the stuffof enchantment and the materialsof fairyland my workstranscend utilityi am the artista creator and demi godit is ridiculous to supposethat i should be deniedthe food i need in orderto continue to createbeauty i tell youplainly mister fly it is alldamned nonsense for that foodto rear up on its hind legsand say it should not be eatenyou have convinced mesaid the fly say no moreand shutting all his eyeshe prepared himself for dinnerand yet he said i couldhave made out a casefor myself too if i hadhad a better line of talkof course you could said the spiderclutching a sirloin from himbut the end would have beenjust the same if neither ofus had spoken at allboss i am afraid that whatthe spider said is trueand it gives me to thinkfuriously upon the futilityof literaturearchy
Don Marquis
From 'the lesson of the moth':and before i could argue himout of his philosophyhe went and immolated himselfon a patent cigar lighteri do not agree with himmyself i would rather havehalf the happiness and twicethe longevitybut at the same time i wishthere was something i wantedas badly as he wanted to fry himself
Don Marquis