Robert Benchley Quotes

We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can't take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major's uniform on.

Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?

I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems.

The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

A man of forty today has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, trembling of the kidneys to whatever tune the orchestra is playing, and a general sense of giddiness when the matter of rent is brought up. Forty is Life's Golden Age.

You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen, the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it.

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.

In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.

There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.

Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.

A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.

It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of

Who said time machines haven't been built yet? They already exist. They're called books

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.

The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success.

England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example.

But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune 70 times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.

There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes and those who do not.

Most of the arguments to which I am party fall somewhat short of being impressive, owing to the fact that neither I nor my opponent knows what we are talking about.

The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.

Except for an occasional heart attack I feel as young as I ever did.

The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something.

I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.

Nothing makes a man feel older than to hear a band coming up the street and not to have the impulse to rush downstairs and out on to the sidewalk.

Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.

It was one of those plays in which all of the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly.

There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.

Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one

Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got.

A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.

A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.

The ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty.

Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.

I don't want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something.... I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason.

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.

A man gets on a train with his little boy, and gives the conductor only one ticket. 'How old's your kid?' the conductor says, and the father says, 'He's four years old.' 'He looks at least twelve to me,' says the conductor. And the father says, 'Can I help it if he worries?

The only cure for a real hangover is death.

There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.

The knocking out of a pipe can be made almost as important as the smoking of it, especially if there are nervous people in the room. A good, smart knock of a pipe against a tin wastebasket and you will have a neurasthenic out of his chair and into the window sash in no time.

In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs.

Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it.

At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn't money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one's hands.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their fox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life whichdoes not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.