James Thurber Quotes

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

"To hell with the handkerchief," said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.

I trust that this collection of pieces will prove that I ave not become, at sixty six going on fifty, as one friend of mine gallantly put it, completely lugubrious.

Beautiful things don't ask for attention.

All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.

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

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.

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

"You have made the moon," The Jester said. "That is the moon."

Women are wiser than men, because they know less and understand more.

At forty my faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening, leaving me unable to write my memoirs with a fitting and discreet inaccuracy, or, having written them, unable to carry them to the publisher.

"I am trying to use reason and intelligence," said the strange new mongoose.

"Reason is six-sevenths of treason," said one of his neighbors.

"Intelligence is what the enemy uses," said another.

Le coeur a ses raisons, Mrs. Bence, que la raison ne connait pas.

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.

Books can be burned,” croaked Black.

“They have a way of rising from the ashes,” said Andreus.