Robert Benchley Quotes

Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.

For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it," they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.

Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.

There seems to be a common strain of miserliness in the American people when it comes to throwing away toothpaste tubes which havea little left in the bottom.

I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author.

A man of forty today has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, trembling of the kidneys to whatever tune the orchestra is playing, and a general sense of giddiness when the matter of rent is brought up. Forty is Life's Golden Age.

The ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty.

The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something.

The discovery of phobias by psychiatrists has done much to clear the atmosphere. Whereas in the old days a person would say: 'Let's get the heck out of here!' today she says: 'Let's get the heck out of here! I've got claustrophobia.

Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one

The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

Who has not wished that his host would come out frankly at the beginning of the visit and state, in no uncertain terms, the rulesand preferences of the household in such matters as the breakfast hour? And who has not sounded out his guest to find out what he likes in the regulation of his diet and modus vivendi (mode of living)?

Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.

My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say "I do not play bridge" is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn't "at all a good player, in fact I'm perfectly rotten," is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.

A child of three cannot raise its chubby fist to its mouth to remove a piece of carpet which it is through eating, without being made the subject of a psychological seminar of child-welfare experts, and written up, along with five hundred other children of three who have put their hands to their mouths for the same reason.

One, two, three / Buckle my shoe.

In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop.

Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.

Work is a form of nervousness.

Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it.

Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800.

As the storm came nearer I began to realize that I hadn't made the most of my three years' immunity. In fact, I hadn't done a single thing about cleaning up my life. I was, if anything, an even more logical target for lightning than the last time I was in range. And thunderstorms don't creep up on you at seven o'clock in the morning in a non-thunderstorm country for nothing, you know. I lined up a rather panicky schedule of reforms ...
But as the storm suddenly petered out and went off in the other direction nothing much has come out of it yet. I may have three years more, and these things can't be rushed.

I never knew anyone yet who got up at six who did anything more useful between that time and breakfast than banging a tennis ballup against the side of the house, waiting for the more civilized members of the party to get up.

A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.

All that a spectator gets out of the game is fresh air, the comical articles in his program, the sight of twenty-two young men rushing about in mysterious formations, and whatever he brought in his flask.

I never liked bananas much anyway. Two-thirds of the way down even one banana I am willing to concede defeat smilingly and give the rest to the nearest monkey.

The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall ... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

What is the disease which manifests itself in an inability to leave a party
any party at all
until it is all over and the lightsare being put out? ... I suppose that part of this mania for staying is due to a fear that, if I go, something good will happen and I'll miss it. Somebody might do card tricks, or shoot somebody else.

There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member ofthe human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to dress up like daddy.

If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios.

I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.

We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can't take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major's uniform on.

Streets full of water. Please Advise.

I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't guess I'll toddle.

If only those old walls could talk ... how boring they would be.

There is no doubt that every healthy, normal boy ... should own a dog at some time in his life, preferably between the ages of forty-five and fifty.

I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.

There are several ways to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory.

There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.

In Milwaukee last month a man died laughing over one of his own jokes. That's what makes it so tough for us outsiders. We have to fight home competition.

It was one of those plays in which all of the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly.

England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example.

There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.

Sheer madness is, of course, the highest possible brow in humor.

One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him. This department of the game has been allowed to run down fearfully.

After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.

Breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men.

Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

I haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an accent now.

You won't find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains.

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.

She sleeps alone at last.

As for me, except for an occasional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.

If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls.

Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.

I have often wondered how they manage to get return envelopes which miss, by one-quarter of an inch, fitting the blank you are supposed to return. They say, "Please fill out and return the enclosed envelope," and the enclosed envelope is always one-quarter of an inch too small.

The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life whichdoes not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.

Other men wear white suits in summer and it doesn't seem to bother them. But my white suit seems to be a little whiter than theirs. I think also that it may have something written on the back of it, although I can't find it when I take the suit off.

The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success.

I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems.

Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper.

The free-lance writer is one who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs.

Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.

I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.

Nothing makes a man feel older than to hear a band coming up the street and not to have the impulse to rush downstairs and out on to the sidewalk.

Who said time machines haven't been built yet? They already exist. They're called books

The only cure for a real hangover is death.

There is probably no moment more appalling than that in which the tongue comes suddenly upon the ragged edge of a space from which the old familiar filling has disappeared.

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

Birds which are the same color as the foliage in which they nest are less likely to be disturbed by other birds who want to drop in and chat, and therefore last longer.

But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.

What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up? ... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.

Infants need the most sleep, and, what is more, get it. Stunning them with a soft, padded hammer is the best way to insure their getting it at the right times.

Streets flooded. Please advise.

The problem of what to wear while lolling about the house on a Sunday afternoon is becoming more and more acute as the fashions in lolling garments change. The American home is in danger of taking on the appearance of an Oriental bordello.

One cubic foot less of space and it would have constituted adultery.

I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen
but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!

If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff ... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.

People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but - " are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong.

Opera is when a guy gets stabbed in the back and, instead of bleeding, he sings.

But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune 70 times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.

I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.

If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.

There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children.