James Thurber Quotes - Page 3

Quotes about:

• Looks can be deceiving; it's eating that's believing.

  James Thurber

  Believe, Food, Cooking

  6 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Thurber

  Memories, Father, Mean

  JAMES THURBER (1945). “THE THURBER CARNIVAL”

  22 Copy quote

• Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.

  James Thurber

  Happiness, Laughter, Cutting

  Quoted in Helen Thurber and Edward Weeks (eds) Selected Letters of JamesT hurber (1981).

  8 Copy quote

• Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

  James Thurber

  Fear, Men, Desperation

  James Thurber (1956). “Further fables for our time”

  13 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Funny, Hilarious, Witty

  Cartoon caption, New Yorker, 5 June 1937

  22 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Art, Men, Long

  1939 In Forum and Century magazine, Jun.

  52 Copy quote

• So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.

  James Thurber

  Knowledge, Information, Written

  James Thurber (1961). “Lanterns & lances”

  13 Copy quote

• I have figured for you the distance between the horns of a dilemma, night and day, and A and Z. I have computed how far is Up, how long it takes to get Away, and what becomes of Gone. I have discovered the length of the sea serpent, the price of priceless, and the square of the hippopotamus. I know where you are when you are at Sixes and Sevens, how much Is you have to have to make an Are, and how many birds you can catch with the salt in the ocean - 187,796,132, if it would interest you.

  James Thurber

  Distance, Ocean, Night

  James Thurber, Marc Simont (1998). “Many Moons”, p.20, Houghton Mifflin Harcourt

  10 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Thank You, Children, Baby Boy

  17 Copy quote

• For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.

  James Thurber

  Flower, Slides, One Thing

  7 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Thurber

  Children, Men, Ideas

  James Thurber (1996). “Writings and Drawings”, Library of America

  19 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Funny, Witty, Numbers

  New Yorker 4 Feb. 1939 "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"

  10 Copy quote

• I'm sixty-five and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics, but if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be forty-eight.

  James Thurber

  Eight, Years, Age

  Quoted in an interview with Glenna Syse in Time Magazine, August 15, 1960.

  8 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Death, Dream, Fear

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.1163, Library of America

  86 Copy quote

• Reason is 6/7 of treason.

  James Thurber

  Reason, Treason

  14 Copy quote

• Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.

  James Thurber

  Years, Firsts, Common

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.37, Library of America

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Thurber

  Dream, Book, Ohio

  James Thurber, Thomas Fensch (1989). “Conversations with James Thurber”, p.126, Univ. Press of Mississippi

  28 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Tragedy, Comedy, Outlook

  1961 Lanterns and Lances,'The Case for Comedy'.

  17 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Laughter, Men, Heartless

  1958 In the New York Times Magazine, 7 Dec.

  16 Copy quote

• Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

  James Thurber

  Art, Boys, Men

  Quoted in Helen Thurber and Edward Weeks (eds) Selected Letters of James Thurber (1981).

  8 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Thurber

  Running, Believe, Men

  15 Copy quote

• I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

  James Thurber

  Book, Reading, Method

  James Thurber (1990). “Collecting Himself: James Thurber on Writing and Writers, Humor and Himself”

  9 Copy quote

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

  James Thurber

  Time, Angel, Long

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.832, Library of America

  81 Copy quote

• Discussion in America means dissent.

  James Thurber

  Mean, America, Comedy

  James Thurber (1961). “Lanterns & lances”

  10 Copy quote

• 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

  James Thurber

  Dog, Fun, Animal

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.957, Library of America

  15 Copy quote

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