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Quotes by James Thurber

  • I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.
  • He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
  • I hate women because they always know where things are.
  • It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.
  • The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
  • The wit makes fun of other persons the satirist makes fun of the world the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people--that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
  • I loathe the expression What makes him tick. It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, 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.
  • Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
  • It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
  • All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
  • You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
  • There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.
  • The wit makes fun of other persons the satirist makes fun of the world the humorist makes fun of himself.
  • 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.
  • Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
  • There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
  • You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
  • Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone
  • Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.