Don Marquis Quotes

No wise man will go to live in the country, unless he has something to do which can be better done in the country. For instance, if he is to shut himself up for a year to study science, it is better to look out to the fields, than to an opposite wall. Then, if a man walks out in the country, there is nobody to keep him from walking in again: but if a man walks out in London, he is not sure when he will walk in again. A great city is, to be sure, the school for studying life.

Farming teaches a brutal work ethic that serves society well when farm kids move to the city.

A contrast between country and city, as fundamental ways of life, reaches back into classical times.

It is more a mentality than the actual places people live, as Jefferson and Hamilton would argue about - city versus country. For example, someone could have an empty place mentality yet be living in a condo in Boca Raton.

I'd like to be in the country so that I'd could like being in the city.

New York City is filled with the same kind of people I left New Jersey to get away from.

There's something about being in the country that makes you stick out like a sore thumb ? you're an anomaly. But in London there's always someone wilder and woollier.

There is a city myth that country life was isolated and lonely; the truth is that farmers and their families then had a richer social life than they have now. They enjoyed a society organic, satisfying and whole, not mixed and thinned with the life of town, city and nation as it now is.

One of the pleasant things about small town life is that everyone, whether rich or poor, liked or disliked, has some kind of a role and place in the community. I never felt that living in a city - as I once did for a couple of years.

The country life is to be preferred, for there we see the works of God; but in cities little else but the works of men. And the one makes a better subject for contemplation than the other.

Knowledge and power in the city; peace and decency in the country.

The City seems so much more in earnest: its business, its rush, its roar are such serious things, sights and sounds. The City is getting its living - the West-End but enjoying its pleasure.

City life is no life for a country man; for such a man that life is a kind of damnation in itself.

I'm a country boy who hasn't really been exposed to city living, and it throws me.

What's the use of a great city having temptations if fellows don't yield to them?

Slavery is now nowhere more patiently endured, than in countries once inhabited by the zealots of liberty.

The real charm of the United States is that it is the only comic country ever heard of.

I love the city. I love the energy of New York and what happens here. But I'm very happy I don't live in the city on a daily basis, because I really do spend a great deal of my time, when I'm not on the road, in my studio - everyday, everyday, everyday.

I'm a city girl and I never really lived in the country, so I'm learning about that.

In the summer New York was the only place in which one could escape from New Yorkers.

I really like to have a coffee shop next door and be able to smoke a cigarette. I'm a city person; I regard nature as something hostile and problematic. I do enjoy it when I get out there, but it is mostly against my will. It's a bit of an awkward thing to say - people really don't like it when you say that.

Let's escape the past. The past didn't work. All we have is the future, and I'm the one who wrote "no future for you!" Don't let the irony be lost.

Modern nature-worship is all upside down. Trees and fields ought to be the ordinary things; terraces and temples ought to be extraordinary. I am on the side of the man who lives in the country and wants to go to London.

I don't know how anyone gets anything done in New York City. I vastly prefer living in the country. I just need a lot of quiet and solitude, and I'm so easily distracted. I mean, the Internet is enough to deal with.