Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
JAMES THURBERThings have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death… others through sheer inability to cross the street.
More James Thurber Quotes
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Looks can be deceiving; it’s eating that’s believing.
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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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The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
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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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If you wonder which is the stronger sex, watch which one twists the other around her little finger.
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I never really rallied after the birth of my first child.
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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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She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.
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Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
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There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
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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.
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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 false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.
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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.
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
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The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.
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Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.
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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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Americans want to go to heaven without dying.
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Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised
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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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I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
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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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Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
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Don’t get it right, just get it written.
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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.
JAMES THURBER