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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.

James Thurber

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
A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
JAMES THURBER

Probability Thinking Worth
I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.
JAMES THURBER

Born Children Myself
Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.
JAMES THURBER

Company Crowd Party Travel Wanderer
The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they’ve been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.
JAMES THURBER

Laughter People Tragedy
The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
JAMES THURBER

Cake Dangerous Food Marriage One Liner Sarcasm
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
JAMES THURBER

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

Definite Development Face Myself Structure
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
The unicorn is a mythical beast.
JAMES THURBER

Fantasy Myth Unicorn
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

Collision Fly Greatness Man World
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.
JAMES THURBER

Feeling Heart Sadness Sorry Touch Yourself
Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.
JAMES THURBER

Angel Lifespan Time
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

Cleaning Hands Night Reason

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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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.

Related Topics

Popular Authors

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