It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
JAMES THURBERThe unicorn is a mythical beast.
More James Thurber Quotes
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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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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 most dangerous food is wedding cake.
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The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
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Boys are beyond the range of anybody’s sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
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For one thing, she pronounced flowers ‘flars’ and I couldn’t let it slide.
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Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.
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Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.
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A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.
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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.
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
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Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
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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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Reason is 6/7 of treason.
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I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.
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Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.
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Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
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Humourists lead… an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.
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I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.
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A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.
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I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.
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So much has already been written about everything that you can’t find out anything about it.
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I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
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If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
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History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.
JAMES THURBER