James Thurber

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

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.

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.

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

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
James Thurber - New Yorker cartoon caption, June 5, 1937
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Early to rise and early to bed Makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead
James Thurber - My Life and Hard Times (1933)
Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

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

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
James Thurber - New Yorker, Apr. 29, 1939 "The Bear Who Let It Alone"
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
James Thurber - in Edward R. Murrow television interview
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself.
James Thurber - New Yorker, Feb. 4, 1939, "The Fairly Intelligent Fly"
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

Let us not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around us in awareness.

There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

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

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

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
James Thurber - New Yorker, Feb. 18, 1939 "The Shrike and the Chipmunks"
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

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

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.
James Thurber - New Yorker, Apr. 29, 1939 "The Owl who was God"
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
James Thurber - "Carpe Noctem, If You Can", in "Credos and Curios" (1962)
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.

Its better to know some of the questions, than all of the answers.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

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.

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

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.

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.

- James Thurber