James Thurber Quotes

It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.

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

Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.

Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. "The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; he was now browsing among the tulips.

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

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

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.

A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.

It's a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.

Cartoon caption, The New Yorker (27 July 1935)

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