James Thurber Quotes

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

The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel. ~ James Thurber

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything. ~ James Thurber

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

The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep. ~ James Thurber

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth. ~ James Thurber

Beautiful things don't ask for attention. ~ James Thurber

Books can be burned," croaked Black.
"They have a way of rising from the ashes," said Andreus. ~ James Thurber

So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it. ~ James Thurber

The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa. ~ James Thurber

Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. ~ James Thurber

Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog. ~ James Thurber

Americans want to go to heaven without dying. ~ James Thurber

The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough. ~ James Thurber

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness. ~ James Thurber

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight. ~ James Thurber

It was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them from our garden. 'I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber were dead, and I hate trees,' said Lisa. ~ James Thurber

The cold Duke was afraid of Now, for Now has warmth and urgency, and Then is dead and buried. ~ James Thurber

When man gives up on reforming and inspiring society he also gives up his freedom. ~ James Thurber

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision. ~ James Thurber

She has a memory of trees and fields and nothing more. ~ James Thurber

He who hesitates is sometimes saved. ~ James Thurber

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm. ~ James Thurber

It was written all in O, or nearly so, and all the O's are gone," said Andrea. "When coat is cat, and boat is bat, and goatherd looks like gathered, and booth is both, since both are bth, the reader's eye is bothered."
"And power is power, and zero zer, and, worst of all, a hero's her." The old man sighed as he said it.
"Anoon is ann, and moan is man." Andrea smiled as she said it.
"And shoe," Andreus said, "is she."
"Ah, woe," the old man said, "is we. ~ James Thurber

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not really going anywhere; that the Force which controls its measured eccentricities hasn't got anything special in mind. If he broods on this somber theme long enough he gets the doleful idea that the laughing children on a merry-go-round or the thin, fine hands of a lady's watch are revolving more purposely than he is. ~ James Thurber

My grandmother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house. It leaked, she contended, out of empty sockets if the wall switch had been left on. She would go around screwing in bulbs, and if they lighted up, she would fearfully turn off the wall switch and go back to her Pearson's or Everybody's, happy in the satisfaction that she had stopped not only a costly but dangerous leakage. nothing could ever clear this up for her. ~ James Thurber

I never quite know when I'm not writing. Sometimes my wife comes up to me at a party and says, "Dammit, Thurber, stop writing." She usually catches me in the middle of a paragraph. ~ James Thurber

He carried a pencil that put a camera to shame. ~ E.B. White

James Thurber was an inspiration because his drawings were so primitive. I am self-taught - I didn't go to art school - so I thought when I started doing them, 'If James Thurber can be a cartoonist, I can,' because his stuff is very raw. ~ Bruce Eric Kaplan

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy, wealthy, and dead. ~ James Thurber

I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint-old man propaganda. ~ James Thurber

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
Fables for Our Time, Moral of "The Owl Who Was God" (1940) ~ James Thurber

The jewels of sorrow last forever ~ James Thurber

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else? ~ James Thurber

My mother, for instance, thought-or rather, knew-that it was dangerous to drive an automobile without gasoline: it fried the valves, or something. 'Now don't you dare drive all over town without gasoline!' she would say to us when we started off (31). ~ James Thurber

If you should walk and wind and wander far enough on one of those afternoons in April when smoke goes down instead of up, and nearby things sound far away and far things near, you are more than likely to come at last to the enchanted forest that lies between the Moonstone Mines and Centaurs Mountain. You'll know the woods when you are still a long way off by virtue of a fragrance you can never quite forget and never quite remember. ~ James Thurber

Walter Mitty: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life. ~ James Thurber

In my mind ran the immortal line of James Thurber, that phrase at once so intensely comic and so pregnant with suggestions of unnameable terror: "Now we go up to the garrick and become warbs." We were going up to the garrick all right, and warbs suddenly seemed the least terrifying of the things we might become. ~ Anthony Boucher

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. ~ James Thurber

I have lived in the East for nearly thirty years now, but many of my books prove that I am never very far away from Ohio in my thoughts, and that the clocks that strike in my dreams are often the clocks of Columbus. ~ James Thurber

I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good. ~ James Thurber

Have you brought the moon to me?" she asked. "Not yet," said the Court Jester, "but I will get it for you right away. How big do you think it is?" "It is just a little smaller than my thumbnail," she said, "for when I hold my thumbnail up at the moon, it just covers it." "And how far away is it? asked the Court Jester. "It is not as high as the big tree outside my window," said the Princess, "for sometimes it gets caught in the top branches." It will be very easy to get the moon for you," said the Court Jester. "I will climb the tree tonight when it gets caught in the top branches and bring it to you." The he thought of something else. "What is the moon make of, Princess?" he asked. "Oh," she said, "it's made of gold, of course, silly. ~ James Thurber

I was seized by the stern hand of Compulsion, that dark, unreasonable Urge that impels women to clean house in the middle of the night. ~ James Thurber

We all have faults, and mine is being wicked. ~ James Thurber

We all have faults, mine is being wicked. ~ James Thurber

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.
A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense. ~ James Thurber

In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear. ~ James Thurber

I can do a score of things that can't be done.
I can find a thing I can't see, and I see a thing I can't find.
The first is time, and the second is a spot before my eyes.
I can feel a thing I cannot touch, and I touch a thing I cannot feel.
The first is sad and sorry, and the second is your heart.
What would you do without me? Say "nothing". ~ James Thurber

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. ~ James Thurber

She wasn't much to look at but she was something to think about. ~ James Thurber

A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home. ~ James Thurber

(Cartoon caption I never really rallied after the birth of my first child. ~ James Thurber

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people – that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature. ~ James Thurber

The Princess Saralinda was tall, with freesias in her dark hair, and she wore serenity brightly like the rainbow. It was not easy to tell her mouth from the rose, or her brow from the white lilac. Her voice was faraway music, and her eyes were candles burning on a tranquil night. She moved across the room like wind in violets, and her laughter sparkled on the air, which, from her presence, gained a faint and undreamed fragrance. The Prince was frozen by her beauty, but not cold, and the Duke, who was cold but not frozen, held up the palms of his gloves, as if she were a fire at which to warm his hands. ~ James Thurber

Leaders are problem solvers by talent and temperament, and by choice. For them, the new information environment-undermining old means of control, opening up old closets of secrecy, reducing the relevance of ownership, early arrival, and location-should seem less a litany of problems than an agenda for action. Reaching for a way to describe the entrepreneurial energy of his fabled editor Harold Ross, James Thurber said 'He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.' That's the appropriate posture for a knowledge executive. ~ Harlan Cleveland

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. ~ James Thurber

One afternoon a big wolf waited in a dark forest for a little girl to come along, carrying a basket of food to her grandmother. Finally a little girl did come a long and she was carrying a basket of food. "Are you carrying that basket to your grandmother? asked the wolf. The little girl said yes, she was. So the wolf asked her where her grandmother lived and the little girl told him and he disappeared into the wood.
When the little girl opened the door of her grandmother's house she saw that there was somebody in bed with a nightcap and nightgown on. She had approached no nearer than twenty-five feet from the bed when she saw that it was not her grandmother but the wolf, for even in a nightcap a wolf does not look any more like your grandmother than the Metro-Goldwyn lion looks like Calvin Coolidge. So the little girl took an automatic out of her basket and shot the wolf dead.
Moral: It is not so easy to fool little girls nowadays as it used to be. ~ James Thurber

Love is what you've been through with somebody ~ James Thurber

The unicorn is a mythical beast, ~ James Thurber

Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it. ~ James Thurber

In the pathways between office and home and home and the houses of settled people there are always, ready to snap at you, the little perils of routine living, but there is no escape in the unplanned tangent, the sudden turn. ~ James Thurber

I won't be listed and labeled or tabbed and tagged," said Clode. "If I want a book, I'll get a book. ~ James Thurber

At least she's not guilty of integrity, and that's more than I can say of any Bell in four generations except my grandfather and myself. ~ James Thurber

What would you do without me? Say 'nothing.'"
"Nothing," said the Prince.
"Good. Then you're helpless and I'll help you. ~ James Thurber

We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves. ~ James Thurber

If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on. ~ James Thurber

Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge. ~ James Thurber

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man. ~ James Thurber

Humourists lead ... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats. ~ James Thurber

Man has always assumed that his is the highest form of life in the universe. There is, of course, nothing at all with which to sustain this view. ~ James Thurber

I would be the last person to say that madness is not a solution. ~ James Thurber

Let us not look back to the past with anger, nor towards the future with fear, but look around with awareness. ~ James Thurber

A false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act. ~ James Thurber

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. ~ James Thurber

Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going. ~ James Thurber

I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs. ~ James Thurber

The Duke is lamer than I am old, and I am shorter than he is cold, but it comes to you with some surprise that I am wiser than he is wise. ~ James Thurber

We all have flaws," he said, "and mine is being wicked. ~ James Thurber

The paths of glory at least lead to the Grave, but the paths of duty may not get you Anywhere. ~ James Thurber

This heavish sweety fragrance,' Thag muttered to himself, 'that rises, or that roses, isn't fit for human noses, and it tricks the minds of men. Three times two is eight,' he said, 'and one is ten. ~ James Thurber

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person. ~ James Thurber

I have figured for you the distance between the horns of a dilemma, night and day, and A and Z. I have computed how far is Up, how long it takes to get Away, and what becomes of Gone. I have discovered the length of the sea serpent, the price of priceless, and the square of the hippopotamus. I know where you are when you are at Sixes and Sevens, how much Is you have to have to make an Are, and how many birds you can catch with the salt in the ocean - 187,796,132, if it would interest you. ~ James Thurber

Most of us, out of a politeness made up of faint curiosity and profound resignation, go out to meet the smiling stranger with a gesture of surrender and a fixed grin, but White has always taken to the fire escape. He has avoided the Man in the Reception Room as he has avoided the interviewer, the photographer, the microphone, the rostrum, the literary tea, and the Stork Club. His life is his own. He is the only writer of prominence I know of who could walk through the Algonquin lobby or between the tables at Jack and Charlie's and be recognized only by his friends.

-on his friend E.B. White ~ James Thurber

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. ~ James Thurber

Looks can be deceiving; it's eating that's believing. ~ James Thurber

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else. ~ James Thurber

You can fool too many people, too much of the time. ~ James Thurber

It didn't work," said the King. "The cloak of invisibility didn't work."
"Yes, it did," said the Royal Wizard.
"No, it didn't," said the King. "I kept bumping into things, the same as ever."
"The cloak is supposed to make you invisible," said the Royal Wizard. "It is not supposed to keep you from bumping into things."
"All I know is, I kept bumping into things," said the King. ~ James Thurber

Don't count your boobies until they are hatched. ~ James Thurber

A peril of the night road is that flecks of dust and streaks of bug blood on the windshield look to me like old admirals in uniform, or crippled apple women, or the front edge of barges, and I whirl out of their way, thus going into ditches and fields and up on front lawns, endangering the life of authentic admirals and apple women who may be out on the roads for a breath of air before retiring. ~ James Thurber

Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends. ~ James Thurber

The whole of Paris is a vast university of Art, Literature and Music ... it is worth anyone's while to dally here for years. Paris is a seminar, a post-graduate course in everything. ~ James Thurber

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

Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separates affirmation from negation, sense from nonsense, and one sex from the other ~ James Thurber

Half a mile from Haverstraw there lived a halfwit fellow,
Half his house was brick and red, and half was wood and yellow;
Half the town knew half his name but only half could spell it.
If you will sit for half an hour, I've half a mind to tell it. ~ James Thurber

The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it. ~ James Thurber

To see things thousands of miles away, things hidden behind walls and within rooms, things dangerous to come to, to draw closer, to see and be amazed. ~ James Thurber

I'm sixty-five and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics, but if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be forty-eight. ~ James Thurber

Let the meek inherit the earth
they have it coming to them. ~ James Thurber

The old man moaned and maundered, murmured, muttered, mumbled odds of this and ends of that, bits and pieces, shreds and edges, full of ifs and whens and theres and thens, amounting in the end and all to six times less than nothing. ~ James Thurber