Quotes from John P. Marquand

I hope that I am as broadminded as others, and you have always seen a decanter of wine on the table.

I know a fellow who's as broke as the Ten Commandments.

Marriage… is a damnably serious business, particularly around Boston.

Some day you will know that there is a beauty of the soul that is more important than worldly beauty. Remember this when you see worldly beauty.

If George Apley failed to meet certain challenges, let us admit that we all have failed in some respects, and let us remember that we stand together peculiarly as one large family. Collectively, in habits and ideals, our group is a family group where kinship, however distant, stretches into the oddest corners.

Most people in the world don't know who the Apleys are and they don't give a damn. I don't intend this as rudeness, but as a sort of comfort. I know it has been a comfort to me sometimes. Just remember that most people don't give a damn. When you remember it, you won't feel the necessity of taking the Apleys so seriously.

Nothing which is worth while is easy, nor in my experience is the actual doing of it particularly pleasant. The pleasure arises from completion and from the knowledge that one has done the right thing and has stood by one's convictions.

Gilbert was always saying that he loved people. He needed them around him. He was always saying that he loved me, and I imagine he honestly believed this, though of course his handling of my career reflected favorably on himself. Love never did mean quite the same thing in the entertainment business as in less volatile circles.

There can be no compromise between wrong and right. Germany is wrong and the Allies are right. The devastations of Belgium and the atrocities of the invading horde of barbarians are an outrage to civilized mankind.

You must learn to spend your money wisely...The main thing is not to have too much money to spend. This I have always found bewildering and a sure pathway to extravagance and foolishness. You only need to look about you among the unhappy members of the sporting set to see what happens when there is too much loose money in the bank.

Materialism has made you worship Mammon and in this material world everything comes too easily. Heat comes too easily and cold. Money comes too easily. Don't forget that it will go as easily as well. We have all grown soft from this ease. Position changes easily. Values shift elusively. When everything is totalled up we have evolved a fine variety of flushing toilets but not a very good world.

It's so much easier when one faces facts, but then all life is largely based on an avoidance of fact, and I admit I try to avoid them. I

Yet whenever he thought of himself as a dull, deluded opportunist, compared with other people, he always remembered the intensity of his own feelings when his father had been speaking. There had been a hideous sense of inevitable disaster, and no possible way to stop it. There

He was speaking more rapidly and confidently and suddenly Charles understood that he was cutting the cloth to fit his faults, as everyone did at some time or other.

His father watched him across the gulf of years and pathos which always must divide a father from his son.