Middle age is the time when a man is always thinking that in a week or two he will feel as good as ever.

Don Marquis (1878–1937) was an American humorist and columnist best known for his satirical newspaper work and for creating “Archy and Mehitabel.” This quip about middle age belongs to Marquis’s broader vein of early-20th-century American comic observation: wry, conversational, and grounded in everyday experience rather than grand moralizing. It reflects a period when syndicated humor and newspaper columns popularized brief, aphoristic jokes about modern life, health, and self-deception. The line is typically quoted as a standalone epigram in later quotation collections, representing Marquis’s knack for compressing a familiar, slightly rueful truth into a single sentence.

The joke turns on a gentle self-deception: in middle age, one often treats fatigue, aches, or diminished stamina as temporary setbacks—believing that a little rest or time will restore the vigor of youth. Marquis captures the psychological habit of postponing acceptance: the body’s changes are reframed as short-term interruptions rather than a new baseline. The humor is sympathetic rather than cruel; it recognizes a universal coping strategy, where hope and denial mingle. As an epigram, it also comments on time itself: “in a week or two” becomes a recurring promise that never quite arrives, marking middle age as a stage defined by deferred recovery.