James Thurber Quotes
James Thurber Quotes
- 1
A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 2
A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 3
All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 4
All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 5
Don't get it right, just get it written.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 6
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 7
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 8
I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 9
I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 10
I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 11
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 12
It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 13
It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 14
Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 15
Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 16
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 17
Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 18
Love is what you've been through with somebody.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 19
Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 20
Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.
James-ThurberJames Thurber
- 21
Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 22
One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 23
Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 24
Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband).
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 25
Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 26
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 27
The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 28
The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 29
The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 30
The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 31
The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 32
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 33
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 34
There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 35
Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 36
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 37
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 38
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
- 39
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
James-Thurber/">James Thurber
