Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
JAMES THURBERI 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.
More James Thurber Quotes
-
-
Americans want to go to heaven without dying.
JAMES THURBER -
But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
JAMES THURBER -
A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.
JAMES THURBER -
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 -
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
JAMES THURBER -
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
JAMES THURBER -
Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
JAMES THURBER -
The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
JAMES THURBER -
Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.
JAMES THURBER -
I don’t believe the writer should know too much where he’s going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprintold man propaganda.
JAMES THURBER -
Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
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 -
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 -
All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER -
One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
JAMES THURBER







