James Thurber quotes: wise famous quotes, sayings and quotations by James Thurber

James Thurber Famous Quotes & Sayings

Discover top inspirational quotes from James Thurber on Wise Famous Quotes.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness.

Discussion in America means dissent.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.

It is all but impossible to sit quietly by when someone is throwing salad plates.

(Cartoon caption I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.

These are the days of bootleg love.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
Fables for Our Time, Moral of "The Owl Who Was God" (1940)

I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.

Geep,' whuppled the parrot.

It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.

Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog.

To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, to draw closer, to see and be amazed.

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

The oyster is a blob of glup, but a woman is a woman.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.

Let the meek inherit the earth
they have it coming to them.

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.

I won't be listed and labeled or tabbed and tagged," said Clode. "If I want a book, I'll get a book.

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.

Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.

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.

It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers.

When man gives up on reforming and inspiring society he also gives up his freedom.

The paths of glory at least lead to the Grave, but the paths of duty may not get you Anywhere.

This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.

The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.

Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.

Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen.

We all have faults, mine is being wicked.

The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough.

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

Dogs are obsessed with being happy.

The jewels of sorrow last forever

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?

You can fool too many people, too much of the time.

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

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.

To call such persons "humorists", a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature.

Don't get it right, just get it written.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

You'll never live to wed his niece. You'll only die to feed his geese.

Well, I'm disenchanted, too. We're all disenchanted.

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

Muggs was always sorry, Mother said, when he bit someone, but we could never understand how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry.

If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on.

Against the may, the could be, and the should, folly 'tis to balance doubt or hope.

Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.

A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

A woman's place is in the wrong.

I am the Golux, the only Golux in the world and not a mere device

Though statisticians in our time have never kept the score, Man wants a great deal here below and Woman even more.

She has a memory of trees and fields and nothing more.

No male can beat a female in the long run because they have it over us in sheer, damn longevity.

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.

Women deserve to have more than 12 years between 28 and 40.

So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy, and dead.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

In other countries, art and literature are left to a lot of shabby bums living in attics and feeding on booze and spaghetti.

I'll never know the right answer for sex and marriage, sense and mirage.

The Old Man ain't afraid of hell

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.

At least she's not guilty of integrity, and that's more than I can say of any Bell in four generations except my grandfather and myself.

Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.

Let us not look back to the past with anger, nor towards the future with fear, but look around with awareness.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

I would be the last person to say that madness is not a solution.

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.

Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

Man has always assumed that his is the highest form of life in the universe. There is, of course, nothing at all with which to sustain this view.

Lately, I have been wondering if there is time left for daydreaming in this 21st-century world of constant communication.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.

Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.

I'm sixty-five and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics, but if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be forty-eight.

You mere device," he gnarled. "You platitude! Your Gollux ex machina!

You have made the moon," The Jester said. "That is the moon.

There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.

The unicorn is a mythical beast,

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

Surely no other American institution is so bound around and tightened up by rules, strictures, adages, and superstitions as the Broadway theatre.

Men are more interesting than women, but women ae more fascinating.

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.

I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle age.

I hate women because they have brought into the currency of our language such expressions as "all righty" and "yes indeedy" and hundreds of others.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

There was a mist of moss to ride through and a storm of glass.