Quotes By James Thurber

It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

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.

There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.

I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband).

I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40.

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.

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.

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.

We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.

My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.

The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

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.

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.

Discussion in America means dissent.