Donald Robert Perry Marquis (1878–1937) was an American humorist, journalist, novelist, poet, cartoonist, and playwright. He was most famous for creating the characters “Archy” the cockroach and “Mehitabel” the cat.
Born in Walnut, Illinois, and educated at Knox College, Galesburg, Illinois, Marquis had a varied career as a journalist and wrote serious plays and poems. He became noted as a humorist through his columns, “The Sun Dial” in the New York Sun and “The Lantern” in the New York Tribune.
Marquis became a celebrity as a comic writer with The Old Soak’s History of the World (1924.) The Old Soak was also adapted into a hit Broadway play (1922–23,) a silent movie (1926,) and a talkie (1937.)
Marquis’s archy and mehitabel (1927) and archys life of mehitabel (1933) follow the fortunes of Archy the cockroach and Mehitabel, an alley cat. Archy was a former poet who cannot reach the typewriter’s shift key so everything he wrote was in lower case. Mehitabel’s morals are questionable, and she claims that she was Cleopatra a former life.
Among Marquis also published collections of humorous poetry, satirical prose, and plays. His other notable works are Danny’s Own Story (1912,) Dreams and Dust (1915,) The Dark Hours (1924,) and Out of the Sea (1927.)
More: Wikipedia • READ: Works by Don Marquis
The goal of all civilization, all religious thought, and all that sort of thing is simply to have a good time. But man gets so solemn over the process that he forgets the end.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Aspirations, Goals
As the skull of a 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.
—Don Marquis
Man cannot be uplifted; he must be seduced into virtue.
—Don Marquis
Topics: 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.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Age, Aging
Successful people are the ones who think up things for the rest of the world to keep busy at.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Success & Failure, Success
I never think at all when I write. Nobody can do two things at the same time and do them well.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Writing, Authors & Writing, Writers
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him whose?
—Don Marquis
Topics: Wealth, Hard Work, Work
When you can’t have anything else, you can have virtue.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Virtue
prohibition makes you want to cry into your beer and denies you the beer to cry into
—Don Marquis
Procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Procrastination, Time
Did you ever notice that when a politician does get an idea he usually gets it all wrong.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Politicians, Politics
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.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Happiness, Unhappiness, Fate
The chief obstacle to the progress of the human race is the human race.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Humanity
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
Topics: Aging
I get up in the morning with an idea for a three-volume novel and by nightfall it’s a paragraph in my column.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Journalism
Adolescence is certainly far from a uniformly pleasant period. Early manhood might be the most glorious time of all were it not that the sheer excess of life and vigor gets a fellow into continual scrapes.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Youth
A pessimist is a person who has had to listen to too many optimists.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Pessimism
Some persons are likable in spite of their unswerving integrity.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Honesty
An idea isn’t responsible for the people who believe it.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Ideas
I do not think anyone can be taught anything about humor, but I do think that certain persons may be taught the mechanism of producing humorous copy that will sell to magazines and newspapers.
—Don Marquis
Every cloud has its silver lining but it is sometimes a little difficult to get it to the mint
—Don Marquis
Topics: Difficulties, Difficulty
Friends, I beg you do not shirk your daily task of indolence.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Relaxation
Publishing a volume of verse is like dropping a rose petal down the Grand Canyon and waiting for the echo.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Poetry
If you make people think they’re thinking, they’ll love you; but if you really make them think, they’ll hate you.
—Don Marquis
An optimist is a man who has never had much experience.
—Don Marquis
Topics: Experience, Optimism
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