James Thurber Quotes
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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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If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.
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Moral: Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.
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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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I hate women because they always know where things are.
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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.
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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.
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He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
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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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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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A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
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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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Discussion in America means dissent.
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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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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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Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
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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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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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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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The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
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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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I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.