James Thurber Quotes

"Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead."

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

"Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority."

"Discussion in America means dissent."

"My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point."

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

He knows all about art, but he doesn`t know what he likes.

Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

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.

It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.

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

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.

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

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

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

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

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

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

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

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

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

There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

The paths of glory at least lead to the grave, but the paths of duty may not get you any where.

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.

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

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

Don`t get it right, just get it written

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

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

Love is what you`ve been through with somebody.

God bless... God damn.