Robert Benchley Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

  Robert Benchley

  Doctors, Long, May

  Robert Benchley (1922). “Love Conquers All”

  4 Copy quote

• There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

  Robert Benchley

  Reading, May, Firsts

  Robert Benchley (1922). “Love Conquers All”

  4 Copy quote

• You want to go easy on the suicide stuff - first thing you know, you'll ruin your health.

  Robert Benchley

  Inspirational, Suicide, Want

  4 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Benchley

  Men, Doors, Uniforms

  Robert Benchley (1970). “Benchley Lost and Found: 39 Prodigal Pieces”, p.43, Courier Corporation

  76 Copy quote

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

  Robert Benchley

  Humor, People, Worry

  Robert Benchley (1954). “The Benchley Roundup”

  9 Copy quote

• The only cure for a real hangover is death.

  Robert Benchley

  Real, Hangover, Cures

  Robert Benchley (2016). “My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew”, p.297, Pickle Partners Publishing

  9 Copy quote

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

  Robert Benchley

  Art, Play, Actors

  15 Copy quote

• If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls.

  Robert Benchley

  Nature, Golf, Eggs

  6 Copy quote

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

  Robert Benchley

  Baseball, England And America, Games

  21 Copy quote

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

  Robert Benchley

  Drinking, People, Alcohol

  "The New Speaker's Treasury of Wit and Wisdom". Book by Herbert Victor Prochnow, 1958.

  10 Copy quote

• Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

  Robert Benchley

  Writing, Knowing, Serious

  Life Magazine, March 8, 1929.

  4 Copy quote

• Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.

  Robert Benchley

  Children, Class, Modern Life

  Robert Benchley (2010). “The Athletic Benchley: 105 Exercises from the Detroit Athletic Club News”, p.25, Glendower Media

  4 Copy quote

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

  Robert Benchley

  Dog, Perseverance, Lying

  Robert Benchley (1976). “Chips Off the Old Benchley”, Amereon Limited

  35 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Benchley

  Smart, People, Smoking

  Robert Benchley (1932). “No Poems”

  9 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Benchley

  People, Done, Come Up

  Chips off the old Benchley (1949) "How to get things Done"

  12 Copy quote

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

  Robert Benchley

  Taken, Vacation, Class

  Robert Benchley (2010). “The Athletic Benchley: 105 Exercises from the Detroit Athletic Club News”, p.1, Glendower Media

  15 Copy quote

• This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as "regulations" but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny.

  Robert Benchley

  Night, Office, Modern Life

  Robert Benchley (1970). “Benchley Lost and Found: 39 Prodigal Pieces”, p.33, Courier Corporation

  5 Copy quote

• I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't guess I'll toddle.

  Robert Benchley

  Justice, Wells, I Can

  4 Copy quote

• The art of cursing people seems to have lost its tang since the old days when a good malediction took four deep breaths to deliverand sent the outfielders scurrying toward the fence to field.

  Robert Benchley

  Art, People, Four

  Robert Benchley (1940). “My Ten Years in a Quandary”

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  Robert Benchley

  Blow, Ice, Brain

  Robert Benchley (1970). “Benchley Lost and Found: 39 Prodigal Pieces”, p.24, Courier Corporation

  20 Copy quote

• Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800.

  Robert Benchley

  Art, Empires, Entertainment

  Robert Benchley (1946). “One Minute, Please”

  4 Copy quote

• All that a spectator gets out of the game is fresh air, the comical articles in his program, the sight of twenty-two young men rushing about in mysterious formations, and whatever he brought in his flask.

  Robert Benchley

  Men, Sight, Air

  4 Copy quote

• New York - The city where the people from Oshkosh look at the people from Dubuque in the next theater seats and say "These New Yorkers don't dress any better than we do.

  Robert Benchley

  New York, Cities, People

  4 Copy quote

• The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.

  Robert Benchley

  Men, Common, Antagonism

  7 Copy quote

• You won't find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains.

  Robert Benchley

  Rain, Lakes, Sea

  Robert Benchley (1946). “One Minute, Please”

  4 Copy quote

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