Quotes By James Thurber

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

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 past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.

All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

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

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

The 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.

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

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).

The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.

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.

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

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

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.

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.

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

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.

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

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