Don Marquis
From Wikiquote
Donald Robert Perry Marquis (29 July 1878 - 29 December 1937) was an American humorist, journalist, and author. He was variously a novelist, poet, cartoonist, newspaper columnist, and playwright. He was best known for creating the characters "Archy" the cockroach, and "Mehitabel" the cat.
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[edit] Sourced
- i have noticed that when chickens quit quarreling over their food they often find that there is enough for all of them i wonder if it might not be the same with the human race
- archy's life of mehitabel, random thoughts by archy (1933)
[edit] archy and mehitabel (1927)
- dedicated to babs
with babs knows what
and babs knows why
- 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
- oh i should worry and fret
death and i will coquette
there s a dance in the old dame yet
toujours gai toujours gai- the song of mehitabel
- procrastination is the
art of keeping<up with yesterday- certain maxims of archy
- an optimist is a guy
that has never had
much experience- certain maxims of archy
- what in hell
have i done to deserve
all these kittens- mehitabel and her kittens
- dance mehitabel dance
caper and shake a leg
what little blood is left
will fizz like wine in a keg- mehitabel dances with boreas
[edit] what the ants are saying
- no insect likes human beings
and if you think you can see why
the only reason i tolerate you is because
you seem less human to me than most of them
- 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
man has oppressed us for a million years
but he goes on steadily
cutting the ground from under
his own feet making deserts deserts deserts
- what man calls civilization
always results in deserts
- 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
- each generation wastes a little more
of the future with greed and lust for riches
- it wont be long now It won't be long
till earth is barren as the moon
and sapless as a mumbled bone
- dear boss i relay this information
without any fear that humanity
will take warning and reform
[edit] archy does his part (1935)
- it is a cheering thought to think
that god is on the side of the best digestion- the big bad wolf
- 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- archy's newest deal
- there is always
a comforting thought
in time of trouble when
it is not our trouble- comforting thoughts
[edit] warty bliggens, the toad
- i met a toad
the other day by the name
of warty bliggens
he was sitting under
a toadstool
feeling contented
he explained that when the cosmos
was created
that toadstool was especially
planned for his personal
shelter from sun and rain
thought out and prepared
for him
- a little more
conversation revealed
that warty bliggens
considers himself to be
the center of the said
universe
the earth exists
to grow toadstools for him
to sit under
the sun to give him light
by day and the moon
and wheeling constellations
to make beautiful
the night for the sake of
warty bliggens
- i asked him
why is it that you
are so greatly favored
ask rather
said warty bliggens
what the universe
has done to deserve me
[edit] the robin and the worm
- a robin said to an
angleworm as he ate him
i am sorry but a bird
has to live somehow the
worm being slow witted could
not gather his
dissent into a wise crack
and retort he was
effectually swallowed
before he could turn
a phrase
- demons and fishhooks
he exclaimed
i am losing my personal
identity as a worm
my individuality
is melting away from me
odds craw i am becoming
part and parcel of
this bloody robin
so help me i am thinking
like a robin and not
like a worm any
longer yes yes i even
find myself agreeing
that a robin must live
i still do not
understand with my mentality
why a robin must live
and yet i swoon into a
condition of belief
- amen said a beetle who had
preceded him into the
interior that is the way i
feel myself is it not
wonderful when one arrives
at the place
where he can give up his
ambitions and resignedly
nay even with gladness
recognize that it is a far
far better thing to be
merged harmoniously
in the cosmic all
and this confortable situation
in his midst
so affected the marauding
robin that he perched
upon a blooming twig
and sang until the
blossoms shook with ecstacy
he sang
i have a good digestion
and there is a god after all
which i was wicked
enough to doubt
yesterday when it rained
- breakfast breakfast
i am full of breakfast
and they are at breakfast
in heaven
they breakfast in heaven
all s well with the world
- how beautiful is the universe
when something digestible meets
with an eager digestion
how sweet the embrace
when atom rushes to the arms
of waiting atom
- well well boss there is
something to be said
for the lyric and imperial
attitude
believe that everything is for
you until you discover
that you are for it
sing your faith in what you
get to eat right up to the
minute you are eaten
for you are going
to be eaten
- there are more things
twixt the vermiform appendix
and nirvana than are dreamt of
in thy philosophy horatio
[edit] Unsourced
- A demagogue is a person with whom we disagree as to which gang should mismanage the country.
- A hypocrite is a person who — but who isn't?
- a man thinks he amounts to a great deal but to a flea or a mosquito a human being is merely something good to eat
- A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.
- A sequel is an admission that you've been reduced to imitating yourself.
- An idea is not responsible for the people who believe in it.
- Blood will tell, but often it tells too much.
- Bores bore each other too; but it never seems to teach them anything.
- Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.
- Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint.
- Fate often puts all the material for happiness and prosperity into a man's hands just to see how miserable he can make himself with them.
- fierce unrest seethes at the core, of all existing things:, it was the eager wish to soar, that gave the gods their wings.
- Fishing is a delusion entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes.
- Happiness is the interval between periods of unhappiness.
- Honesty is a good thing, but it is not profitable to its possessor unless it is kept under control.
- How often when they find a sage, As sweet as Socrates or Plato; They hand him hemlock for his wage, Or bake him like a sweet potato!
- I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it's a paragraph in my column.
- I say that I am myself, but what is this Self of mine But a knot in the tangled skein of things where chance and change combine?
- I would rather start a family than finish one.
- Ideas pull the trigger, but instinct loads the gun.
- If a child shows himself to be incorrigible, he should be decently and quietly beheaded at the age of twelve, lest he grow to maturity marry, and perpetuate his kind.
- If you make people think they're thinking, they'll love you; But if you really make them think, they'll hate you.
- 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 order to influence a child, one must be careful not to be that child's parent or grandparent.
- Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.
- Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.
- now and then
there is a person born
who is so unlucky
that he runs into accidents
which started out to happen
to somebody else
- 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.
- 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.
- prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into
- Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
- Punctuality is one of the cardinal business virtues: always insist on it in your subordinates.
- Science has always been too dignified to invent a good backscratcher.
- Some persons are likeable in spite of their unswerving integrity.
- 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.
- 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.
- When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: "Whose?"
- When you can't have anything else, you can have virtue.
