James Thurber Quotes - Page 2

Quotes about:

• The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough.

  James Thurber

  Generations, Modern Life, Trouble

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• But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.

  James Thurber

  Real, Heart, Men

  "Collecting Himself". Book by James Thurber, 1989.

  16 Copy quote

• Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

  James Thurber

  Investing, Nonconformist, Non Conformist

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• Love is what you've been through with somebody.

  James Thurber

  Love, Marriage, Valentines Day

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

  James Thurber

  Fun, World, Comedy

  Interview with Edward R. Murrow on "Small World", CBS-TV, March 25, 1959.

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• Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

  James Thurber

  Humor, Sarcasm, Doe

  26 Copy quote

• The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing's fun. You're getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.

  James Thurber

  Fun, Moving, Writing

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

  25 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Thurber

  Humor, Artist, Depth

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

  45 Copy quote

• Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.

  James Thurber

  Party, Two, Three

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.355, Library of America

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• Don't get it right, just get it written.

  James Thurber

  Inspirational Life, Writing, Comedy

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.562, Library of America

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• The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.

  James Thurber

  Dog, Successful, Animal

  James Thurber (1955). “Thurber's Dog's: A Collection of the Master's Dogs”

  39 Copy quote

• Americans want to go to heaven without dying.

  James Thurber

  Heaven, Dying, Want

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• Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

  James Thurber

  Inspirational, Humor, Emotional

  The New York Post, February 29, 1960.

  76 Copy quote

• A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.

  James Thurber

  Responsibility, Hands, Two

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.552, Library of America

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• I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.

  James Thurber

  Dog, Thoughtful, Puppy

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• 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”

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• Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

  James Thurber

  Fear, Men, Desperation

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

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• 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

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

  James Thurber

  Flower, Slides, One Thing

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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.

  James Thurber

  Laughter, War, Home

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

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• 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.

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• If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

  James Thurber

  Dog, Nature, Animal

  36 Copy quote

• Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.

  James Thurber

  Humor, Thinking, Hair

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• Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'

  James Thurber

  Writing, Editing, Editors

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

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• 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).

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