Don Marquis - Time Quotes

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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.
It is to old age that we look for reimbursement, the most of us. And most of us look in vain. For the most of us have been wrenched and racked, in one way or another, until old age is the most trying time of all.
In the Almost Perfect State every person shall have at least ten years before he dies of easy, carefree, happy living... things will be so arranged economically that this will be possible for each individual.

Don Marquis
Men talk of money and industry
of hard times and recoveries
of finance and economics
but the ants wait and the scorpions wait
for while men talk they are making deserts all the time
getting the world ready for the conquering ant
drought and erosion and desert
because men cannot learn

Don Marquis
Boss there is always
a comforting thought
in time of trouble when
it is not our trouble.

Don Marquis
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 while

Don Marquis
By the time a bartender knows what drink a man will have before he orders, there is little else about him worth knowing.

Don Marquis
[Middle age] is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he'll feel just as good as ever.

Don Marquis
As i was crawling
through the holes in
a swiss cheese
the other
day it occurred to
me to wonder
what a swiss cheese
would think if
a swiss cheese
could think and after
cogitating for some
time i said to myself
if a swiss cheese
could think
it would think that
a swiss cheese
was the most important
thing in the world
just as everything that
can think at all
does think about itself

Don Marquis
No matter how nearly perfect an Almost Perfect State may be, it is not nearly enough perfect unless the individuals who compose it can, somewhere between death and birth, have a perfectly corking time for a few years. The most wonderful governmental system in the world does not attract us, as a system; we are after a system that scarcely knows it is a system; the great thing is to have the largest number of individuals as happy as may be, for a little while at least, some time before they die.

Don Marquis
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 humble

Don Marquis
The octopus's secret wish
is not to be a formal fish
he dreams that some time he may grow
another set of legs or so
and be a broadway music show

Don Marquis
Infancy is not what it is cracked up to be. The child seems happy all the time to the adult, because the adult knows that the child is untouched by the real problems of life; if the adult were similarly untouched he is sure that he would be happy. But children, not knowing that they are having an easy time, have a good many hard times. Growing and learning and obeying the rules of their elders, or fighting against them, are not easy things to do.

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

Don Marquis
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