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 THURBERThe dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals
More James Thurber Quotes
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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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There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
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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.
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Boys are beyond the range of anybody’s sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
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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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Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
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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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Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
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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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The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn’t get lost enough.
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I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.
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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.
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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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Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.
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Don’t count your boobies until they are hatched.
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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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I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
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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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So much has already been written about everything that you can’t find out anything about it.
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The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
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If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
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She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.
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One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
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But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
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All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER