James Thurber Quotes
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I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprintold man propaganda.
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Though statisticians in our time have never kept the score, Man wants a great deal here below and Woman even more.
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Quick, name some towns in New Jersey
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Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.
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Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
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There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
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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'.
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The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.
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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.
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I was seized by the stern hand of Compulsion, that dark, unreasonable Urge that impels women to clean house in the middle of the night.
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The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep.
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I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.
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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.
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Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.
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Love is what you've been through with somebody.
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I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
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We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
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I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.
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The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
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These are the days of bootleg love.
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No male can beat a female in the long run because they have it over us in sheer, damn longevity.
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With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.
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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.
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Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.
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But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
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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.
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What would you do without me? Say 'nothing.'" "Nothing," said the Prince. "Good. Then you're helpless and I'll help you.
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The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
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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.
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A wet dog is lovingest.
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