James Thurber's 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.

James Thurber

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?

James Thurber

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.

James Thurber

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

James Thurber

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.

James Thurber

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.

James Thurber

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

James Thurber

The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.

James Thurber

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

James Thurber

Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.

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

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