James Thurber Quotes

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.

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

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

Boys are perhaps beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of eighteen months and ninety years.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

The noblest study of mankind is Man, says Man.

I am the Golux, the only Golux in the world and not a mere device

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

Love is blind, but desire just doesn't give a good goddam. [sic]

With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.

One (martini) is all right, two is too many, three is not enough.

"They've got him!" squealed the Duke. "Eleven men to one!"

"You may have heard of Galahad," said Hark, "whose strength was as the strength of ten."

"That leaves one man to get him," cried the Duke.

Ne regardez pas en arrière avec colère,
ni devant avec crainte,
mais autour de vous avec conscience.

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

I won't go down the horrible street
To see the horrible people
I'll gladly climb the terrible stair
That leads to the terrible steeple
And the terrible rats
And the terrible bats
And the cats in the terrible steeple
But I won't go down the horrible street
To see the horrible people