Quotes from James Thurber

Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.

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'.

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

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.

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.

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

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.

These are the days of bootleg love.

Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!

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

A lady of forty-seven who has been married twenty-seven 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.'

I am 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were 15 months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example, I think they deserve to have more than 12 years between the ages of 28 and 40.

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness.

Humour is emotional chaos remembered in tranquillity.

Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband).

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear-end collision and Man will never know that what hit him from behind was Man.

We all have flaws, and mine is being wicked.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

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.

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

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