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

James Thurber

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

Marriage Mutual Thinking
The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
JAMES THURBER

Heartless Laughter Man Tears Terrible
Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.
JAMES THURBER

Achievement Character Expression Humor Laughter Separate
For one thing, she pronounced flowers ‘flars’ and I couldn’t let it slide.
JAMES THURBER

Accent Ignore Language Pronounce
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
JAMES THURBER

Face Fall Yourself
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
JAMES THURBER

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

Darkness Dreams Fear Sleep
Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.
JAMES THURBER

Angel Lifespan Time
Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
JAMES THURBER

Desperate Live Man Noisy
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
JAMES THURBER

Mathematics Safety
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
JAMES THURBER

Answer Better Known Question
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
JAMES THURBER

Call Myself Number Phone Wrong Yourself
I never quite know when I’m not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, “Dammit, Thurber, stop writing.” She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph.
JAMES THURBER

Catch Herself Known Myself Poet Quite Writing
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

Book Dreams Evidence Live Myself Thinking
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
JAMES THURBER

Angry Awareness Fear Future Past
The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess.
JAMES THURBER

Future Guess Past Sound

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

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

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