Aging & Wisdom Quote by Don Marquis

Fishing, in Marquis's hands, isn't a pastime so much as a carefully maintained con. "Delusion" does the heavy lifting: it frames the whole enterprise as a self-administered hallucination, a willing suspension of common sense in exchange for ritual, hope, and a story you can take home even when the cooler is empty. The joke lands because it refuses the sentimental outdoorsy script. Where fishing culture sells patience, purity, and communion with nature, Marquis treats it like a stage show where the audience insists on being fooled.

"Entirely surrounded by liars in old clothes" sharpens the satire from private self-deception to public performance. The "liars" are the ones who talk about the one that got away, the secret spot, the exact lure, the wind direction that "changed everything" - a community bonded by exaggeration and selective memory. "Old clothes" is a small, devastating detail: it punctures the heroic image of the rugged angler and replaces it with thrift, habit, and a kind of shabby masculinity. This isn't a frontier epic; it's men in worn jackets swapping tall tales to justify the hours.

As a journalist in early 20th-century America, Marquis knew how narratives get manufactured and circulated - especially the cozy myths that keep everyday life bearable. The line reads like a columnists' jab at Americana: fishing persists not because it's efficient, but because it's socially useful. It grants permission to fail beautifully, then call it tradition.