James Thurber (1894-1961)

Quotes

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

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

• 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.

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

• Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

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

• Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

• He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

• Let us not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around us in awareness.

• The paths of glory at least lead to the grave, but the paths of duty may not get you any where.

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

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

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

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

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

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

• I hate women because they always know where things are.

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

• 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.

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