James Thurber Quotes - Page 4

Quotes about:

• 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

• Quick, name some towns in New Jersey

  James Thurber

  Names, Towns, Jersey

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.190, Library of America

  9 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

• Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.

  James Thurber

  Laughter, Character, Expression

  James Thurber (1961). “Lanterns & lances”

  17 Copy quote

• He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.

  James Thurber

  Art, Likes, Favourite

  Cartoon caption, New Yorker, 4 Nov. 1939 See Gelett Burgess 6

  5 Copy quote

• In an extensive reading of recent books by psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and inspirationalists, I have discovered that they all suffer from one or more of these expression-complexes: italicizing, capitalizing, exclamation-pointing, multiple-interrogating, and itemizing. These are all forms of what the psychos themselves would call, if they faced their condition frankly, Rhetorical-Over-Compensation.

  James Thurber

  Reading, Book, Expression

  10 Copy quote

• 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.

  James Thurber

  Writing, Interesting, Challenges

  9 Copy quote

• It was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them from our garden. 'I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber were dead, and I hate trees,' said Lisa.

  James Thurber

  Mother, Hate, Garden

  5 Copy quote

• I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.

  James Thurber

  Dog, Cat, Men

  James Thurber (1961). “Lanterns & Lances”, New York : Harper

  37 Copy quote

• Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.

  James Thurber

  Knowing, Ends

  James Thurber (1978). “Further fables for our time”, Simon & Schuster

  4 Copy quote

• Salvador [Dali] was brought up in Spain, a country colored by the legends of Hannibal, El Greco, and Cervantes. I was brought up in Ohio, a region steeped in the tradition of Coxey's Army, the Anti-Saloon League, and William Howard Taft.

  James Thurber

  Country, Army, Ohio

  JAMES THURBER (1945). “THE THURBER CARNIVAL”

  9 Copy quote

• I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.

  James Thurber

  Fall, Simple, Expression

  8 Copy quote

• With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

  James Thurber

  Birthday, Sarcastic, Writing

  1955 In the New York Post, 30 Jun.

  9 Copy quote

• Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.

  James Thurber

  Sad, Death, Desire

  8 Copy quote

• Sanity, soundness, and sincerity, of which gleams and strains can still be found in the human brain under powerful microscopes, flourish only in a culture of clarification, which is now becoming harder and harder to detect with the naked eye.

  James Thurber

  Powerful, Eye, Brain

  8 Copy quote

• Humourists lead... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.

  James Thurber

  Taken, House, Feelings

  1933 On humorists. My Life and Hard Times, preface.

  8 Copy quote

• Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.

  James Thurber

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.588, Library of America

  14 Copy quote

• If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.

  James Thurber

  Eye, Elephants, Theatre

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

  9 Copy quote

• Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.

  James Thurber

  Men, Needs, Said

  James Thurber (1961). “Lanterns & Lances”, New York : Harper

  4 Copy quote

• When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

  James Thurber

  Writing, Justice, Glare

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

  10 Copy quote

• There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.

  James Thurber

  Believe, Years, Long

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

  7 Copy quote

• The unicorn is a mythical beast.

  James Thurber

  Mythical Beasts, Unicorn, Beast

  James Thurber (1996). “James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty)”, p.587, Library of America

  54 Copy quote

• You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

  James Thurber

  Inspirational, Funny, Fall

  New Yorker 29 Apr. 1939 "The Bear Who Let It Alone"

  12 Copy quote

• Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.

  James Thurber

  Witty, Stupid, Trying

  Letter to Malcolm Cowley on March 11, 1954. "Collecting Himself". Book by James Thurber, 1989.

  12 Copy quote

• Comedy has ceased to be a challenge to the mental processes. It has become a therapy of relaxation, a kind of tranquilizing drug.

  James Thurber

  Humor, Drug, Challenges

  10 Copy quote

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