If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
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
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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 -
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
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Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
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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.
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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.
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
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I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
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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.
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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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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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Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
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The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn’t get lost enough.
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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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Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.
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A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.
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When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
JAMES THURBER -
I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance – a sharp, vindictive glance.
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With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
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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.
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For one thing, she pronounced flowers ‘flars’ and I couldn’t let it slide.
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There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
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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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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.
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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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The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess.
JAMES THURBER