Mario Puzo was an American novelist and screenwriter. He is best known for his novel The Godfather, which was later adapted into a film by Francis Ford Coppola. Puzo wrote the screenplay for the first two Godfather films and received two Academy Award nominations for his work. Following is our collection on famous quotes by Mario Puzo on family, love, epic.
Quick Jump To
Top 10 Mario Puzo Quotes
Mario Puzo Quotes About Family
Mario Puzo Quotes About Love
Mario Puzo Quotes About Gambling
Short Mario Puzo Quotes
Life Lessons
Famous Mario Puzo Quotes
Top 10 Mario Puzo Quotes
The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, lies in its loyalty to each other.
A lawyer with his briefcase can steal more than a hundred men with guns.
A friend should always underestimate your virtues and an enemy overestimate your faults
Friendship and money: oil and water.
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment.
Great men are not born great, they grow great . . .
The only wealth in this world is children, more than all the money, power on earth.
Our own death wish is our only real tragedy.
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.
Finance is a gun. Politics is knowing when to pull the trigger.
Mario Puzo inspirational quote
Mario Puzo Image Quotes
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. — Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo Short Quotes
In Sicily, women are more dangerous than shotguns.
Keep your friends close, but your enemies closer.
Never get angry. Never make a threat. Reason with people.
Even the strongest man needs friends.
Not having to worry about money is almost like not having to worry about dying.
I'll make him an offer he can't refuse.
Oh, what a wicked world it is that drives a man to sin.
Actions defined a man; words were a fart in the wind
Life is like a box of Hand grenades,You never know what will blow you to kingdom come
Why should I be afraid now? Strange men have come to kill me ever since I was twelve years old.
The strength of a family, like the strength of an army, is in its loyalty to each other.
Mario Puzo Quotes About Family
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
A man who doesn't spend time with his family can never be a real man. — Mario Puzo
Fredo, you're my older brother and I love you. But don't ever take sides against the Family again. Ever. — Mario Puzo
Every family has bad memories. — Mario Puzo
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
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
Mario Puzo Quotes About Love
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
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
Falling in love is great but being in love is a disaster — Mario Puzo
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
Mario Puzo Quotes About Gambling
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
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
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
All gamblers are paranoid, though they call it superstition. — Mario Puzo
With the perverse logic of a degenerate gambler he figured God was testing his faith. — Mario Puzo
I find the only thing that really stands up, better than gambling, better than booze, better than women, is reading. — Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo Famous Quotes And Sayings
Never hate your enemies. It affects your judgment. — Mario Puzo
I have always believed helping your fellow man is profitable in every sense, personally and bottom line. — Mario Puzo
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
If anything in this life is certain...if history has taught us anything, it's that you cn kill anyone. — Mario Puzo
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
We don't know if capital punishment is a deterrent, but we know that men we execute will not murder again. — Mario Puzo
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
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
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
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
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
I like to drink wine more than I used to. Anyway, I'm drinking more. — Mario Puzo
Time erodes gratitude more quickly than it does beauty! — Mario Puzo
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
Revenge is a dish that tastes best when served cold. — Mario Puzo
We are all honorable men here, we don 't have to give each other assurances as if we were lawyers. — Mario Puzo
Let us be separated by wars and pestilence, death, madness but not by the passing of time. — Mario Puzo
The fact of the matter is that I wanted to hold a grudge in some funny kind of way.Against everybody. — Mario Puzo
ِAn offer you can't refuse. — Mario Puzo
I believe in America. America's made my fortune. — Mario Puzo
Some honorable men spend their whole life preparing for a supreme act of treachery — Mario Puzo
It was from this experience came his oft-repeated belief that every man has but one destiny. — Mario Puzo
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. — Mario Puzo
I will make you an offer you cannot refuse — Mario Puzo
Any man can turn traitor. — Mario Puzo
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
Power isn't everything ...its the only thing. — Mario Puzo
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
It's just business nothing personal. — Mario Puzo
I want to tell you a story. I have no other vanity. — Mario Puzo
There are things that have to be done and you do them and you don't talk about them. You don't try to justify them. They can't be justified. You just do them. Then you forget them. — Mario Puzo
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
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
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
I spent my whole life trying not to be careless. Women and children can afford to be careless, but not men. — Mario Puzo
Tell my father I wish to be his son. — Mario Puzo
"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
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
Accidents don't happen to people who take accidents as a personal insult. — Mario Puzo
Michael: This used to be my father's old study -- it's changed. I remember there used to be a big desk, right here. I remember when I was a kid, Frankie, we had to be very quiet when we played near here. I was very happy that this house never went to strangers -- first Clemenza took it over, now you. My father taught me many things here -- he taught me in this room... (then, as Michael sits beside Pentangeli) He taught me -- keep your friends close but your enemies closer. — Mario Puzo
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
I'm gonna make him an offer he can't refuse. — Mario Puzo
Behind every successful fortune;There is Crime. — Mario Puzo
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
And in that fraction of a second before anything actually happened, Santino Corleone knew he was a dead man. — Mario Puzo
No, that's not possible," Michael said. "Killed, yes; jail, no. — Mario Puzo
Leave the gun. Take the cannoli. — Mario Puzo
Power wears out those who do not have it. — Mario Puzo
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
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
Many young men started down a false path to their true destiny. Time and fortune usually set them aright. — Mario Puzo
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
Life Lessons by Mario Puzo
Mario Puzo teaches us to never give up in the face of adversity and to always strive for success. He emphasizes the importance of family and loyalty, and shows us that even in the darkest of times, it is possible to find hope and joy.
He also reminds us that the power of love is strong enough to overcome any obstacle and that it is important to take risks and trust in our instincts.
Lastly, Mario Puzo teaches us that we should never forget our roots and that our heritage is something to be proud of and cherished.
Citation
Feel free to cite and use any of the quotes by Mario Puzo. For popular citation styles (APA, Chicago, MLA), go to citation page.