James Thurber Quotes

People who do not understand pigeons — and pigeons can be understood only when you understand that there is nothing to understand about them — should not go around describing pigeons or the effect of pigeons.

"Who are you?" the minstrel asked. "I am the Golux," said the Golux, proudly, "the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device."

It’s an agent of the devil, sent to punish evildoers for having done less evil than they should.

I'll never know the right answer for sex and marriage, sense and mirage.

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.

I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?

Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

Hens embarrass me; owls disturb me; if I am with an eagle I always pretend that I am not with an eagle; and so on down to swallows at twilight who scare the hell out of me. But pigeons have absolutely no effect on me.

"To call such persons "humorists", a loose-fitting and ugly word, is to miss the nature of their dilemma and the dilemma of their nature."

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery, and a sense of timing.