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.
JAMES THURBERThe trouble with the lost generation is that it didn’t get lost enough.
More James Thurber Quotes
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One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
JAMES THURBER -
For one thing, she pronounced flowers ‘flars’ and I couldn’t let it slide.
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Comedy has ceased to be a challenge to the mental processes. It has become a therapy of relaxation, a kind of tranquilizing drug.
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I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.
JAMES THURBER -
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.
JAMES THURBER -
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
JAMES THURBER -
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.
JAMES THURBER -
I was seized by the stern hand of Compulsion, that dark, unreasonable Urge that impels women to clean house in the middle of the night.
JAMES THURBER -
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
JAMES THURBER -
Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
JAMES THURBER -
With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
JAMES THURBER -
I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
JAMES THURBER -
Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.
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There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
JAMES THURBER -
Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched.
JAMES THURBER -
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.
JAMES THURBER -
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
JAMES THURBER -
Let the meek inherit the earth — they have it coming to them.
JAMES THURBER -
I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.
JAMES THURBER -
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
JAMES THURBER -
I have lived in the East for nearly thirty years now, but many of my books prove that I am never very far away from Ohio in my thoughts, and that the clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus.
JAMES THURBER -
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
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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?
JAMES THURBER -
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.
JAMES THURBER -
The unicorn is a mythical beast.
JAMES THURBER -
Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.
JAMES THURBER