Don Marquis: Quotes about personality

“We shall know that the Almost Perfect State is here when the kind of old age each person wants is possible to him.”

Don Marquis

The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: We shall know that the Almost Perfect State is here when the kind of old age each person wants is possible to him. Of course, all of you may not want the kind we want... some of you may prefer prunes and morality to the bitter end.

Age , Personality , Perfection

“Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be.”

Don Marquis

The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: Between the years of ninety-two and a hundred and two, however, we shall be the ribald, useless, drunken, outcast person we have always wished to be. We shall have a long white beard and long white hair; we shall not walk at all, but recline in a wheel chair and bellow for alcoholic beverages; in the winter we shall sit before the fire with our feet in a bucket of hot water, a decanter of corn whiskey near at hand, and write ribald songs against organized society; strapped to one arm of our chair will be a forty-five calibre revolver, and we shall shoot out the lights when we want to go to sleep, instead of turning them off; when we want air we shall throw a silver candlestick through the front window and be damned to it; we shall address public meetings (to which we have been invited because of our wisdom) in a vein of jocund malice. We shall … but we don’t wish to make any one envious of the good time that is coming to us … We look forward to a disreputable, vigorous, unhonoured, and disorderly old age.

Personality

“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

The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: 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.

Age , Learning , Personality

“Personally we look forward to an old age of dissipation and indolence and unreverend disrepute.”

Don Marquis

The Almost Perfect State (1921)
Context: Personally we look forward to an old age of dissipation and indolence and unreverend disrepute. In fifty years we shall be ninety-two years old. We intend to work rather hard during those fifty years and accumulate enough to live on without working any more for the next ten years, for we have determined to die at the age of one hundred and two.

Age , Personality

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

Don Marquis

Personality , Funny

“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

Reading , Personality

“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”

Don Marquis

warty bliggens, the toad

Feeling , Sun , Personality

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