Top 80 Don Marquis Quotes (2025 Update)
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51. “It is a cheering thought to think that God is on the side of the best digestion.”

— Don Marquis

52. “You want to know whether I believe in ghosts? Of course I do not believe in them. If you had known as many of them as I have, you would not believe in them either.”

— Don Marquis

53. “An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe in it.”

— Don Marquis

54. “I would rather start a family than finish one.”

— Don Marquis

55. “A certain alloy of expediency improves the gold of morality and makes it wear all the longer.”

— Don Marquis

56. “Too many creatures both insects and humans estimate their own value by the amount of minor irritation they are able to cause to greater personalities than themselves.”

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

58. “I do not see why men sheould be so proud insects have the more ancient lineage according to the scientists insects were insects when man was only a burbling whatisit.”

— Don Marquis

59. “Our is a world where people don’t know what they want and are willing to go through hell to get it.”

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

61. “A great many people who spend their time mourning over the brevity of life could make it seem longer if they did a little more work.”

— Don Marquis

62. “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

63. “It has been my observation and experience, and that of my family, that nothing human works out well.”

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

66. “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.”

— Don Marquis

67. “Vibrations are the key to everything. Atoms used to be, but atoms have quite gone out.”

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

69. “When you can’t have anything else, you can have virtue.”

— Don Marquis

70. “No form of government matters nearly as much as the spirit and intelligence brought to the administration of any form of government.”

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

72. “Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.”

— Don Marquis

73. “Censors are necessary, increasingly necessary, if America is to avoid having a vital literature.”

— Don Marquis

74. “The best good that you can possibly achieve is not good enough if you have to strain yourself all the time to reach it. A thing is only worth doing, and doing again and again, if you can do it rather easily, and get some joy out of it.”

— Don Marquis

75. “Just as soon as the uplifters get a country reformed it slips into a nose dive.”

— Don Marquis

76. “There is bound to be a certain amount of trouble running any country. If you are president, the trouble happens to you. But if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so that most of the trouble happens to other people.”

— Don Marquis

77. “Old godheads sink in space and drown Their arks like foundered galleons sucked down.”

— Don Marquis

78. “In order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child’s parent or grandparent.”

— Don Marquis

79. “Most of the people living in New York have come here from the far to try to make enough money to go back to the farm.”

— Don Marquis

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

— Don Marquis

81. “With regard to ghosts, while we have never believed in them, we have always been afraid of them.”

— Don Marquis

82. “A fierce unrest seethes at the core, of all existing things:, it was the eager wish to soar, that gave the gods their wings.”

— Don Marquis