James Thurber Quotes

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

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

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

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

Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.

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.

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

The unicorn is a mythical beast.

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.

Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.

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.

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

I never had a dog that showed a human fear of death. Death, to a dog, is the final unavoidable compulsion, the least ineluctable scent on a fearsome trail, but they like to face it alone, going out into the woods, among the leaves, if there are any leaves when their time comes, enduring without sentimental human distraction the Last Loneliness, which they are wise enough to know cannot be shared by anyone.

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.

Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.

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

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

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

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

A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.

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.

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing's fun. You're getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.

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

The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they've been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.

Let me be the first to admit that the naked truth about me is to the naked truth about Salvador Dali as an old ukulele in the attic is to a piano in a tree, and I mean a piano with breasts. Senor Dali has the jump on me from the beginning. He remembers and describes in detail what it was like in the womb. My own earliest memory is of accompanying my father to a polling booth in Columbus, Ohio, where he voted for William McKinley.

Beautiful things don't ask for attention.

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

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

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

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is.

I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.

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.

A lady of 47 who has been married 27 years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it for me like this: 'Love is what you've been through with somebody'.

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

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.

Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.

Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.

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

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

I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint—old man propaganda.

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

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.