Quotes by Don Marquis

Ideas pull the trigger but instinct loads the gun.

Friends I beg you do not shirk your daily task of indolence.

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

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

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!

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

Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a mans hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.

Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.

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

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.

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

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

I would rather start a family than finish one.

Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.

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

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

There is nothing so habit-forming as money.

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

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

Poetry is what Milton saw when he went blind.