Quotes from James Thurber

It is hard for me to believe that Miss Groby ever saw any work of literature from far enough away to know what it meant. She was forever climbing up the margins of books and crawling between their lines for the little gold of phrase, making marks with a pencil. As Palamides hunted the Questing Beast, she hunted the Figure of Speech. She hunted it through the clangorous halls of Shakespeare and through the green forests of Scott.

To call such persons humorists, a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature.

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

Después de todo ¿dónde no hay infierno?

Man has always assumed that his is the highest form of life in the universe. There is, of course, nothing at all with which to sustain this view.

The oyster is a blob of glup, but a woman is a woman.

Something very much like nothing anyone had ever seen before came trotting down the stairs and crossed the room. What is that? the Duke asked, palely. I don't know what it is, said Hark, but it's the only one there ever was.

The old man moaned and maundered, murmured, muttered, mumbled odds of this and ends of that, bits and pieces, shreds and edges, full of ifs and whens and theres and thens, amounting in the end and all to six times less than nothing.

Ne regardez pas en arrière avec colère, ni devant avec crainte, mais autour de vous avec conscience.

A dehoy who was terribly hobble, Cast only stones that were cobble And bats that were ding, From a shot that was sling, But never hit inks that were bobble.

When I was a young writer, I liked to imagine that I was paying someone for every word I wrote, rather than being paid for it; it was a fine way to discipline myself to use only those words I needed.

the Princess Saralinda thought she saw, as people often think they see, on clear and windless days, the distant shining shores of Ever After. Your guess is quite as good as mine (there are a lot of things that shine) but I have always thought she did, and I will always think so.

There was a smell, the Golux thought, a little like Forever in the air, but mixed with something faint and less enduring, possibly the fragrance of a flower.

Fools rush in where angels fear to tread, and the angels are all in Heaven, but few of the fools are dead.

It didn't work, said the King. The cloak of invisibility didn't work. Yes, it did, said the Royal Wizard. No, it didn't, said the King. I kept bumping into things, the same as ever. The cloak is supposed to make you invisible, said the Royal Wizard. It is not supposed to keep you from bumping into things. All I know is, I kept bumping into things, said the King.

Laugh and the world laughs with you, love and you love alone.

If you should walk and wind and wander far enough on one of those afternoons in April when smoke goes down instead of up, and nearby things sound far away and far things near, you are more than likely to come at last to the enchanted forest that lies between the Moonstone Mines and Centaurs Mountain. You'll know the woods when you are still a long way off by virtue of a fragrance you can never quite forget and never quite remember.

I won't go down the horrible street To see the horrible people I'll gladly climb the terrible stair That leads to the terrible steeple And the terrible rats And the terrible bats And the cats in the terrible steeple But I won't go down the horrible street To see the horrible people

The jewels of sorrow last forever

The Duke is lamer than I am old, and I am shorter than he is cold, but it comes to you with some surprise that I am wiser than he is wise.

You'll never live to wed his niece. You'll only die to feed his geese.

People who do not understand pigeons?and pigeons can be understood only when you understand that there is nothing to understand about them?should not go around describing pigeons or the effect of pigeons.

I would be the last person to say that madness is not a solution.

This time the destruction was so complete... That nothing at all was left in the world Except one man And one woman And one flower