Don Marquis
When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.Collection: Virtue
If a child shows himself incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity, marry, and perpetuate his kind.Collection: Death
It wont be long now it wont be long man is making deserts of the earth it wont be long now before man will have used it up so that nothing but ants and centipedes and scorpions can find a living on it.Collection: Men
The most pleasant and useful persons are those who leave some of the problems of the universe for God to worry about.Collection: Worry
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.Collection: Irritation
My heart hath followed all my days Something I cannot name.Collection: Heart
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.Collection: Believe
What man calls civilization always results in deserts.Collection: Men
personally my ambition is to get my time as a cockroach shortened for good behavior and be promoted to a revenue officer it is not much of a step up but i am humbleCollection: Humble
For him who fain would teach the world The world holds hate in fee- For Socrates, the hemlock cup; For Christ, Gethsemane.Collection: Hate
It has been my observation and experience, and that of my family, that nothing human works out well.Collection: Work Out
Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtueCollection: Men
Not every woman in old slippers can manage to look like CinderellaCollection: Looks
As the skull of the man grows broader, so do his creeds. And his gods they are shaped in his image and mirror his needs. And he clothes them with thunders and beauty, He clothes them with music and fire, Seeing not, as he bows by their altars, That he worships his own desire.Collection: Men
Yes, he's got all them different kinds of thoroughbred blood in him, and he's got other kinds you ain't mentioned and that you ain't slick enough to see.Collection: Funny
There was once a Hindu sage, who sat down on the banks of the Ganges and thought for seventy years about the millennium. Just as he arrived at the solution and was putting it into verse, a mosquito stung him and he forgot it again at once.Collection: Years
That stern and rockbound coast felt like an amateur when it saw how grim the puritans that landed on it were.Collection: Atheism
If the world were not so full of people, and most of them did not have to work so hard, there would be more time for them to get out and lie on the grass, and there would be more grass for them to lie on.Collection: Lying
It would be a colorless world if each individual did not secretly believe himself superior to almost everyone else.Collection: Believe
The things that I can't have I want, And what I have seems second-rate, The things I want to do I can't, And what I have to do I hate.Collection: Hate
Persian pussy from over the sea demure and lazy and smug and fat none of your ribbons and bells for me ours is the zest of the alley catCollection: Cat
He worked like hell in the country so he could live in the city, where he worked like hell so he could live in the country.Collection: Country
Life's too damn funny for me to explain.Collection: Life
From 'the lesson of the moth': and before i could argue him out of his philosophy he went and immolated himself on a patent cigar lighter i do not agree with him myself i would rather have half the happiness and twice the longevity but at the same time i wish there was something i wanted as badly as he wanted to fry himselfCollection: Philosophy
fire is beautiful and we know that if we get too close it will kill us but what does that matter 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 whileCollection: Beautiful
No form of government matters nearly as much as the spirit and intelligence brought to the administration of any form of government.Collection: Government
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 farmCollection: New York
An old stomach reforms more whiskey drinkers than a new resolve.Collection: Reform
the high cost of living isnt so bad if you dont have to pay for itCollection: Cost Of Living
The female of all species are most dangerous when they appear to retreat.Collection: Female
i have had my ups and downs but wotthehell wotthehell yesterday sceptres and crowns fried oysters and velvet gowns and today i herd with bums but wotthehell wotthehell i wake the world from sleep as i caper and sing and leap when i sing my wild free tune wotthehell wotthehell under the blear eyed moon i am pelted with cast off shoon but wotthehell wotthehellCollection: Sleep
A little while with grief and laughter, And then the day will close; The shadows gather ... what comes after No man knows.Collection: Death
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.Collection: Funny
it is better to be a part of beauty for one instant and then cease to exist than to exist forever and never be a part of beautyCollection: Forever
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.Collection: Men
what man calls civilizationalways results in desertsman is never on the squarehe uses up the fat and greenery of the eartheach generation wastes a little moreof the future with greed and lust for richesCollection: Men
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.Collection: Work
It is a cheering thought to think that God is on the side of the best digestion.Collection: Cheer
Censors are necessary, increasingly necessary, if America is to avoid having a vital literature.Collection: Freedom
A certain alloy of expediency improves the gold of morality and makes it wear all the longer.Collection: Gold
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!Collection: Life
For all of the creeds are false, and all of the creeds are true; And low at the shrines where my brothers bow, there will I bow too; For no form of a god, and no fashion Man has made in his desperate passion, But is worthy some worship of mine; Not too hot with a gross belief, Nor yet too cold with pride, I will bow me down where my brothers bow, Humble, but open eyed.Collection: Fashion
I love you as New Englanders love pie!Collection: Love
Vibrations are the key to everything. Atoms used to be, but atoms have quite gone out.Collection: Keys
I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column.Collection: Morning
Many a man spanks his children for things his own father should have spanked out of him.Collection: Children
Life is one damned kitten after another." Mehitabel the Alley CatCollection: Cat
Just as soon as the uplifters get a country reformed it slips into a nose dive.Collection: Country
Give up the dream that Love may trick the fates To live again somewhere beyond the gleam Of dying stars, or shatter the strong gates Some god has builded high; give up the dream.Collection: Dream