Mario Puzo famous quotes

A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults
-- Mario Puzo

#Enemy #Faults #Underestimate

Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
-- Mario Puzo

#Hate #Hatred #Enemy

Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Destiny #Path

What is past is past. never go back. Not for excuses. Not for justification, not for happiness. You are what you are, the world is what it is.
-- Mario Puzo

#Past #World #Excuse

Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
-- Mario Puzo

#Inspirational #Enemy #Classic

Even the strongest man needs friends.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Needs #Friend In Need

Friendship and money: oil and water.
-- Mario Puzo

#Friendship #Money #Real Friends

And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Fractions #Dead Man

He smelled the garden, the yellow shield of light smote his eyes, and he whispered, "Life is so beautiful." ... Yes, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important.
-- Mario Puzo

#Beautiful #Eye #Garden

Some honorable men spend their whole life preparing for a supreme act of treachery
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Honorable #Whole Life

I don't trust society to protect us, I have no intention of placing my fate in the hands of men whose only qualification is that they managed to con a block of people to vote for them.
-- Mario Puzo

#Block #Fate #Men

Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.
-- Mario Puzo

#Anger #People #Advice

Santino, never let anyone outside the family know what you are thinking. Never let them know what you have under your fingernails. I think your brain is going soft from all that comedy you play with that young girl. Stop it and pay attention to business. Now get out of my sight.
-- Mario Puzo

#Girl #Thinking #Sight

Gambling is not as destructive as war or as boring as pornography. It is not as immoral as business or as suicidal as watching television. And the percentages are better than religion.
-- Mario Puzo

#War #Suicidal #Gambling

A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
-- Mario Puzo

#Funny #Humorous #Gun

I have always believed helping your fellow man is profitable in every sense, personally and bottom line.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Fellow Man #Lines

Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
-- Mario Puzo

#Gun #Knowing #Finance

Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty!
-- Mario Puzo

#Gratitude #Erode #Doe

If anything in this life is certain...if history has taught us anything, it's that you cn kill anyone.
-- Mario Puzo

#Taught #Life Is #This Life

When I was young, some women told me they loved me for my long eyelashes. I accepted. Later it was for my wit. Then for my power and money. Then for my talent. Then for my mind-deep. OK, I can handle all of it. The only woman who scares me is the one who loves me for myself alone. I have plans for her. I have poisons and daggers and dark graves in caves to hide her head. She can't be allowed to live. Especially if she's sexually faithful and never lies and always puts me ahead of everything and everyone.
-- Mario Puzo

#Lying #Dark #Eyelashes

Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold.
-- Mario Puzo

#Revenge #Taste #Cold

there was no greater natural advantage in life than having an enemy overestimate your faults, unless it was to have a friend underestimate your virtues.
-- Mario Puzo

#Enemy #Faults #Underestimate

The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, lies in its loyalty to each other.
-- Mario Puzo

#Family #Loyalty #Lying

Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Greatness #Born

Friendship is everything. Friendship is more than talent. It is more than the government. It is almost the equal of family.- Don Corleone
-- Mario Puzo

#Friendship #Inspiring #Government

She emptied her mind of all thought of herself, of her children, of all anger, of all rebellion, of all questions. Then with a profound and deeply willed desire to believe, to be heard, as she had done every day since the murder of Carlo Rizzi, she said the necessary prayers for the soul of Michael Corleone.
-- Mario Puzo

#Children #Prayer #Believe

The fact of the matter is that I wanted to hold a grudge in some funny kind of way.Against everybody.
-- Mario Puzo

#Way #Facts #Matter

Italians have a little joke, that the world is so hard a man must have two fathers to look after him, and that's why they have godfathers.
-- Mario Puzo

#Father #Men #Two

We are all honorable men here, we do not have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Giving #Lawyer

A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man.
-- Mario Puzo

#Real #Real Men #Men

Actions defined a man; words were a fart in the wind
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Wind #Action

Do you believe a man can truly love a woman and constantly betray her?Never mind physically but betray her in his mind,in the very "poetry of his soul".Well,it's not easy but men do it all the time.
-- Mario Puzo

#Believe #Men #Soul

The only wealth in this world is children, more than all the money, power on earth.
-- Mario Puzo

#Children #World #Earth

Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.
-- Mario Puzo

#Competition #Genius #Achieve

I like to drink wine more than I used to. Anyway, I'm drinking more.
-- Mario Puzo

#Drinking #Wine #Age

Every family has bad memories.
-- Mario Puzo

#Family #Memories #Bad Memories

No, that's not possible," Michael said. "Killed, yes; jail, no.
-- Mario Puzo

#Jail #Said #Corleone

I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.
-- Mario Puzo

#Refuse #Offers

God seemed to be having a hard time killing him, and he'd be damned if he was going to make the job easy for mere mortals
-- Mario Puzo

#Jobs #Hard Times #Killing

Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult.
-- Mario Puzo

#People #Insult #Accidents

The truth now.He was disappointed in human beings.He had seen too many betrayals,too many pitiful weaknesses,too much greed for money and fame.The falseness between lovers,husbands and wifes,fathers,sons,mothers,daughters
-- Mario Puzo

#Daughter #Mother #Husband

What we think of as our sensitivity is only the higher evolution of terror in a poor dumb beast. We suffer for nothing. Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
-- Mario Puzo

#Real #Thinking #Dumb

It can be argued that man's instinct to gamble is the only reason he is still not a monkey up in the trees.
-- Mario Puzo

#Science #Men #Tree

I believe in America. America's made my fortune.
-- Mario Puzo

#Believe #America #Made

ِAn offer you can't refuse
-- Mario Puzo

#Refuse #Offers

‎"But you're the toughest son of a b!&€# i've ever seen.You never let anybody get near you.You never let anybody know what you really think.
-- Mario Puzo

#Son #Thinking

Michael: Barzini will set me up through somebody close... that, supposedly, I won't suspect. Hagen: Somebody like me. Michael: You're Irish, they won't trust you. Hagen: I'm German-American. Michael: To them that's Irish.
-- Mario Puzo

You can't hide the thunderbolt. When it hits you, everybody can see it. Christ, man, don't be ashamed of it, some men pray for the thunderbolt. You're a very lucky fellow. - Calo
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Lucky #Praying

Never show anger at slight,Tell nothing.Earn Respect from everyone by deeds,not Words.Respect the members of your Blood Family.Gambling was Recreation,Not a way to earn a Living.Love your Father,your Mother, your Sister but beware of Loving any other Woman than your Wife.And a Wife was a woman who bore your Children.And once that happened to You,your Life was Forfeit to give them their daily bread
-- Mario Puzo

#Mother #Children #Father

Life is like a box of Hand grenades,You never know what will blow you to kingdom come
-- Mario Puzo

#Blow #Hands #Life Is Like

Oh, what a wicked world it is that drives a man to sin.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Wicked #World

Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Years #Twelve

Even as a young man, Vito Corleone became known as a "man of reasonableness." He never uttered a threat. He always used logic that proved to be irresistible. He always made certain that the other fellow got his share of profit. Nobody lost. He did this, of course, by obvious means. Like many businessmen of genius he learned that free competition was wasteful, monopoly efficient. And so he simply set about achieving that efficient monopoly.
-- Mario Puzo

#Mean #Men #Competition

I find the only thing that really stands up, better than gambling, better than booze, better than women, is reading.
-- Mario Puzo

#Reading #Beer #Gambling

Not having to worry about money is almost like not having to worry about dying.
-- Mario Puzo

#Retirement #Worry #Dying

Every man has but one destiny" Veto Corleone
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Destiny #Veto

Fredo you're my older brother and I love you. But don't ever take sides against the family...
-- Mario Puzo

#Brother #Love You #Sides

All gamblers are paranoid, though they call it superstition.
-- Mario Puzo

#Gambling #Superstitions #Paranoid

it's just business nothing personal...
-- Mario Puzo

Tell my father I wish to be his son.
-- Mario Puzo

#Father #Son #Wish

He was a degenerate gambler. That is, a man who gambled simply to gamble and must lose. As a hero who goes to war must die. Show me a gambler and I'll show you a loser, show me a hero and I'll show you a corpse.
-- Mario Puzo

#War #Hero #Men

It was a lie but he believed in telling lies to people. Truth telling and medicine just didn't go together except in dire emergencies, if then.
-- Mario Puzo

#Lying #Medicine #People

You cannot say 'no' to the people you love, not often. That's the secret. And then when you do, it has to sound like a 'yes'. Or you have to make them say 'no.' You have to take time and trouble.
-- Mario Puzo

#Love #People #Secret

Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time.
-- Mario Puzo

#War #Pestilence #Madness

In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns.
-- Mario Puzo

#Shotguns #Dangerous

Power isn't everything ...its the only thing.
-- Mario Puzo

Falling in love is great but being in love is a disaster
-- Mario Puzo

#Falling In Love #Being In Love #Love Is

We are a family, and the loyalty of the family must come before anything and everyone else. For if we honor that commitment, we will never be vanquished-but if we falter in that loyalty we will all be condemned.
-- Mario Puzo

#Loyalty #Commitment #Honor

Power wears out those who do not have it.
-- Mario Puzo

We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Punishment #Murder

Love is like the little red toy wagon you get for your Christmas or your sixth birthday. It makes you deliriously happy and you just can't leave it alone. But sooner or later the wheels come off. Then you leave it in a corner and forget it. Falling in love is great. Being in love is a disaster
-- Mario Puzo

#Falling In Love #Being In Love #Love Is

Behind every successful fortune;There is Crime.
-- Mario Puzo

#Successful #Crime #Fortune

Michael could never remember his father ever having uttered a word about death, as if the Don respected death too much to philosophize about it.
-- Mario Puzo

#Father #Too Much #Remember

Take the gun. Leave the cannoli.
-- Mario Puzo

#Gun #Cannolis

Yet, he thought, if I can die saying, "Life is so beautiful," then nothing else is important. If i can believe in myself that much, nothing else matters.
-- Mario Puzo

#Beautiful #Death #Believe

Any man can turn traitor.
-- Mario Puzo

#Men #Traitor #Turns

Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
-- Mario Puzo

#Real #Tragedy #Wish

I will make you an offer you cannot refuse
-- Mario Puzo

#Refuse #Offers

I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men.
-- Mario Puzo

#Children #Men #Trying

The other Dons in the room applauded and rose to shake hands with everybody in sight and to congratulate Don Corleone and Don Tattaglia on their new friendship. It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other. That was friendship enough in this world, all that was needed.
-- Mario Puzo

#Sight #Hands #Rose

He had long ago learned that society imposes insults that must be borne, comforted by the knowledge that in this world there comes a time when the most humble of men, if he keeps his eyes open, can take his revenge on the most powerful. It was this knowledge that prevented the Don from losing the humility all his friends admired in him.
-- Mario Puzo

#Powerful #Revenge #Humble

Never let a domestic quarrel ruin a day's writing. If you can't start the day fresh, get rid of your wife.
-- Mario Puzo

#Writing #Wife #Ruins

I want to tell you a story. I have no other vanity.
-- Mario Puzo

#Vanity #Want #Stories

It was not perhaps the warmest friendship in the world, they would not send each other Christmas gift greetings, but they would not murder each other.
-- Mario Puzo

#World #Murder #Christmas Gift