Life is just one damned thing after another.

No originator is known. Quote Investigator (2015) found the earliest dated instance in the Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader of 5 March 1909, a filler headed ‘LIFE (A new definition.)’ reading ‘One damn thing after another’, reprinted in Arizona on 14 March; Lilian Bell’s novel The Concentrations of Bee (1909) has a character with a wall motto ‘Life is just one damned thing after another!’; Quote Investigator labels the saying anonymous. The Roycrofters’ Motto Book (copyright 1909; its month of publication is not known) lists ‘Life is just one damn thing after another’ among the mottoes it sold (seen here; Quote Investigator does not mention it), under a title page that says its epigrams are by Fra Elbertus ‘assisted at times by’ Solomon, Ruskin, Shakespeare and others. The Philistine printed it without ascription in December 1909 (per Quote Investigator, not seen), and the Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (1923) prints it among Hubbard’s epigrams (seen in the scan’s OCR, p. 141). Other credits followed: Bruce Calvert (1910), Mark Twain (H. L. Mencken, 1919), Frank Ward O’Malley (obituaries, 1932); Mencken’s New Dictionary of Quotations (1942) gives it to O’Malley ‘also to Elbert Hubbard’. Nothing found shows Hubbard coining it, and it was in print before any dated Hubbard use. Searched: Quote Investigator, Wikiquote, the archive.org scans of the Motto Book (1909) and the Roycroft Dictionary (1923); newspaper archives could not be searched from here.

1. 1839Before it · credited to Mr. Mantalini (Charles Dickens)Mr. Mantalini in Dickens’s Nicholas Nickleby calls his life ‘one demd horrid grind’: the complaint and the oath, not the wording.Charles Dickens, The Life and Adventures of Nicholas Nickleby (London, 1839). Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
2. 1909Earliest found · credited to no one (a wall motto)In Lilian Bell’s novel The Concentrations of Bee, a character has it as a motto on his wall: one of the 1909 appearances Quote Investigator puts first (its month is not known).Life is just one damned thing after another!Lilian Bell, The Concentrations of Bee (New York: Grosset & Dunlap, 1909), p. 241. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
3. 1909Spread · credited to Fra Elbertus (Elbert Hubbard), ‘assisted at times by’ othersThe Roycrofters’ Motto Book (copyright 1909, month not known) lists it among the wall mottoes they sold, No. 109.Life is just one damn thing after anotherFra Elbertus [Elbert Hubbard], The Motto Book; Being a Catalogue of Epigrams (East Aurora: The Roycrofters, 1909), p. 25. Checked on a page scan. Source
4. 5 March 1909Spread · credited to no oneAn unattributed newspaper filler gives it as ‘a new definition’ of life: the earliest instance known with a full date.LIFE (A new definition.) One damn thing after another.Wilkes-Barre Times-Leader (Wilkes-Barre, Pennsylvania), 5 March 1909, p. 6 (filler item), p. 6. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
5. December 1909Spread · credited to no one (Hubbard’s magazine)The Philistine prints it without ascription.Life is just one damn thing after another.The Philistine: A Periodical of Protest, vol. 30, no. 1 (East Aurora: The Roycrofters, December 1909), p. 32. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
6. March 1910Credited to Bruce CalvertAn article in Wood Craft calls it Bruce Calvert’s idea of life.James F. Hobart, ‘Surenow’s Accident at the Circular Saw’, Wood Craft (Cleveland, March 1910), p. 167. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
7. 1919Credited to Mark TwainH. L. Mencken, in The American Language, says Mark Twain is credited with it.Life is one damn thing after another.H. L. Mencken, The American Language: A Preliminary Inquiry into the Development of English in the United States (New York: Knopf, 1919). Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.
8. 1923Credited to Elbert HubbardThe posthumous Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams prints it among Hubbard’s epigrams.Life is just one damn thing after another.Elbert Hubbard, Roycroft Dictionary and Book of Epigrams (East Aurora: The Roycrofters, 1923), p. 141. Checked in the text of a page scan, not the image. Source
9. 1942Credited to Frank Ward O’Malley; Elbert HubbardMencken’s New Dictionary of Quotations ascribes it to Frank Ward O’Malley ‘also to Elbert Hubbard’.Life is simply one damned thing after another.H. L. Mencken (ed.), A New Dictionary of Quotations on Historical Principles from Ancient and Modern Sources (New York: Knopf, 1942), p. 694. Checked on another researcher’s citation, not seen first-hand.

Credited to Elbert Hubbard (and to Mark Twain and the journalist Frank Ward O’Malley) in quote books and online. In 1909 the saying appeared all at once: unattributed newspaper fillers from March, a wall motto in a novel by Lilian Bell, a coal advertisement, a baseball team’s motto. Hubbard’s Roycrofters sold it as a wall motto in their 1909 Motto Book, and The Philistine printed it without a name in December 1909; the posthumous Roycroft Book of Epigrams (1923) then printed it among his epigrams.

A wry complaint that life is an endless run of troubles and annoyances, each arriving as soon as the last is dealt with.

• ShortenedLife is one damn thing after another. The form H. L. Mencken credited to Mark Twain in The American Language (1919), per Quote Investigator. Where it was seen
• A misquotationLife is simply one damned thing after another. Mencken’s New Dictionary of Quotations (1942): ‘Ascribed to Frank Ward O’Malley (1876-1932); also to Elbert Hubbard’, per Quote Investigator. Where it was seen

Life, Suffering, Time

• Golf is a good walk spoiled. (not found) Mark Twain
• A bank is a place where they lend you an umbrella in fair weather and ask for it back again when it begins to rain. (not found) Robert Frost
• No man needs a vacation so much as the man who has just had one. (misattributed)
• Some cause happiness wherever they go; others whenever they go. (not found) Oscar Wilde
• Imitation is the sincerest form of flattery that mediocrity can pay to greatness. (not found) Oscar Wilde

• quoteinvestigator.com/2015/09/02/life-one (Quote Investigator, ‘Life Is Just One Damned Thing After Another’, 2 September 2015)
• archive.org/details/mottobookbeingca00hubb (The Motto Book, 1909, scan, p. 25, No. 109)
• The Dictionary of Modern Proverbs, comp. Charles Clay Doyle, Wolfgang Mieder and Fred R. Shapiro (Yale University Press, 2012), p. 144 (cited by Quote Investigator; not seen here)

“Life is just one damned thing after another.” Attributed to Elbert Hubbard. No. No one knows who coined it: it was in print without a name from March 1909, and in a 1909 novel as a wall motto. The same year Hubbard’s Roycrofters sold it as a wall motto and The Philistine printed it unsigned; later books credited him. Quotogeny, https://quotogeny.com/q/life-is-just-one-damn-thing-after-another/ (checked 23 October 2026).

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