Don Marquis's Quotes

Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.

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

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.

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

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

It takes all sorts of people to make the underworld.

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

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

Ours is a world where people don't know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.

Pity the meek, for they shall inherit the earth.

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.

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

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

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

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

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

There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

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

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.

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

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

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

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

Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.