James Thurber Quotes
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But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
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I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.
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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.
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I hate women because they always know where things are.
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When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
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He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
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Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.
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Discussion in America means dissent.
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A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
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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).
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The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.
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Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.
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It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
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From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery, and a sense of timing.
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Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
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The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.
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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.
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We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.
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My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.
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Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.
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Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!
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Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
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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.
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Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?