Don Marquis Quotes

Many women long for what eludes them, and like not what is offered them.

Being frustrated is disagreeable, but the real disasters of life begin when you get what you want.

Suffering is getting what you do not want while wanting what you do not get.

It was so much easier when I didn't want anything. Not getting what you want can make you cruel.

My dad had a lot of bad luck. You could see his suffering, his terrible suffering, living a life that was disappointing and looking for another one.

My one regret in life is that I am not someone else.

The malcontent is neither well, full nor fasting; and though he abounds with complaints, yet nothing dislikes him but the present; for what he condemns while it was, once passed, he magnifies and strives to recall it out of the jaw of time. What he hath he seeth not, his eyes are so taken up with what he wants; and what he sees he careth not for, because be cares so much for that which is not.

Wanting more is just a recipe for heartache.

The want of a thing is perplexing enough, but the possession of it, is intolerable.

Her future, she thought, was likely to be worse than her past, for after her years of contented renunciation, she had slipped back into desire and longing; she found joyless days of distasteful occupation harder and harder; she found the image of the intense and varied life she yearned for, and despaired of, becoming more and more importunate.

She hates everything that is not what she longs for.

All I want is a little more than I'll ever get.

What makes man most unhappy is to be deprived not of that which he had, but of that which he did not have, and did not really know.

The discontented believe that their regrets are about the past.

Want is misery.

There is only one thing I want. I would like to be seriously ill, and to hear nothing more about him for at least a week. Why doesn't something happen to me? Why do I have to go through all this? If only I had never set eyes on him!

Perhaps when we find ourselves wanting everything, it is because we are dangerously close to wanting nothing.

I am not unaware of the saying that more tears have been shed over wishes granted than wishes denied.

After you get what you want you don't want it.

Sometimes, things you wish had happened don't, or there are things you wish you'd been able to do but can't.

It must be horrible to do things that you don't like hoping to please other people, and they don't like it either, and you've got to eat it.

Haircuts are never good. You always end up being unhappy.

I guess I could sit around and say, 'Gee, I wish I were playing at the Capital Centre tonight instead of Hammerjacks,' but it doesn't happen.

I hate not playing. That's the bottom line.

I don't make any secret of it - I hate not playing.