James Thurber Quotes

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

James Thurber

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Quotes to Explore

• I hate to say it but I think it has become very obvious that our system for devising trade agreements, so very important to this country's functioning around the world, has not only broken, but it has broken completely.

  

  Xavier Becerra
  • World
  • Important
  • Country

• I am, in general, favourable to activism and social movements and hostile to graft and corruption.

  

  Tariq Ali
  • Social
  • Corruption
  • Activism

• There was this song I was working on called 'Swing.' It was almost finished, but there was something missing, and I couldn't for the life of me figure it out. And then this little piece of information - this little tweet - came to the forefront of my mind.

  

  Imogen Heap
  • Life
  • Mind
  • Song

• All the teaching I had ever received had failed to make me apply such intelligence as I was possessed of, directly and vividly: there had never been any sunshine, as regards language, in the earlier grey days of learning, for the sky had always pelted with gerunds and optatives.

  

  E. F. Benson
  • Learning
  • Sky
  • Intelligence

• Life is a travelling to the edge of knowledge, then a leap taken.

  

  D. H. Lawrence
  • Life
  • Knowledge
  • Taken

• There's always something more to be accomplished with a character. Theater is a human experience. There's nothing shellacked or finished off about it. I guess that's why it always draws me back.

  

  Sada Thompson
  • Character
  • Experience
  • Always

• If I'd had the choice when I was 14, and someone had said to me, 'You can either be a footballer or an actor,' I'd have said: 'Well, can't I be a footballing actor?'

  

  Ian McShane
  • Actor
  • Choice
  • Footballer

• When there are multiple versions of a story, you really have three ways to go. You can pick the most sensational version. You can try to balance things in your gut to get to what you think is the honest truth. Or you can err on the side of kindness.

  

  Walter Isaacson
  • Truth
  • Balance
  • Kindness

• When you write something, at first you might feel very defensive and protective of every single thing, but after a while, you just see what works and what doesn't. Sometimes you do test screenings, and an audience tells you that, or sometimes you eventually just go, 'Let's cut the joke out.'

  

  Edgar Wright
  • You
  • Single
  • Sometimes

• I don't have one role that I'm particularly fond of doing, and I don't really look for it to differ all the time, but I will try anything and do anything. If it's a role I connect with, I'll go for it, no matter what's involved.

  

  Mae Whitman
  • Time
  • Doing
  • Look

• It is indeed an odd business that it has taken this Court nearly two centuries to 'discover' a constitutional mandate to have counsel at a preliminary hearing.

  

  Warren E. Burger
  • Business
  • Taken
  • Two

• One day, I saw a statue of Benjamin Franklin, and I said to myself, 'I can do that kind of work, too.'

  

  Edmonia Lewis
  • Work
  • Day
  • Myself

• A person is born with feelings of envy and hate. If he gives way to them, they will lead him to violence and crime, and any sense of loyalty and good faith will be abandoned.

  

  Xun Kuang
  • Good
  • Faith
  • Hate

• There's more pressure on women to be chirpy and perky.

  

  Barbara Ehrenreich
  • Women
  • More
  • Pressure

• Logic is one thing and commonsense another.

  

  Logic
  • Logic

• If I wanted a full-scale manifestation, one that was apparent to other people, then I would do a ritual. I have displayed the snake god to other people. Or I have consciously hypnotised them into accepting my psychotic belief system, given them drugs, and made them think they are having the experience I have. Whatever you want. I’m not fussed.

  

  Alan Moore
  • People
  • God
  • Experience

• I don't make a habit of watching my parents' films, because it is a little strange. But I will say that I binge watch 'House of Cards' compulsively, and I think it's the first time I've ever seen one of my mom's projects and totally forgot she was my mom!

  

  Dylan Penn
  • Time
  • She
  • House

• I love women. I get along with women more than men, and I have more women friends.

  

  Alber Elbaz
  • Men
  • Women
  • Friends

• There is a sense in which we have - like, I go in to teach a class; I may be somewhat different than I would be talking to you, although it's related because it's public. I'm very different with my roommate or my lover or my cats. But I don't know if that means you're acting, really, if you're being truthful.

  

  Mary Gaitskill
  • Different
  • May

• We ask the leaf, "Are you complete in yourself?" And the leaf answers, "No, my life is in the branches." We ask the branch, and the branch answers, "No my life is in the root." We ask the root, and it answers, "No my life is in the trunk and the branches and the leaves. Keep the branches stripped of leaves, and I shall die," So it is with the great tree of being. Nothing is completely and merely individual.

  

  Harry Emerson Fosdick
  • Answers
  • Branches
  • Leaf

• I dated this guy who literally would never eat a single vegetable. I was like, 'This is terrible. You eat like a five-year-old.'

  

  Dua Lipa
  • Guy
  • Single

• For we do not think that we know a thing until we are acquainted with its primary conditions or first principles, and have carried our analysis as far as its simplest elements.

  

  Aristotle
  • Know
  • Thing
  • Principles

• First and last follow each other.

  

  Lao Tzu
  • First
  • Follow
  • Last

• With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

  

  James Thurber