A List of Famous James Thurber Quotes By Reference

A list of quotes from James Thurber. Here are the best James Thurber quotes on various subjects. The James Thurber quotations list is alphabetical but can be sorted by any column. Enjoy these sayings coined by James Thurber. You can use the items in this list to create a new list, re-rank it to fit your opinion, then share it with your Twitter followers, Facebook friends or with any other social networks you use on a regular basis.

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1

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.

James Thurber

Drawing
2

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.

James Thurber

Wisdom
3

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

James Thurber

Purpose
4

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

James Thurber

Arts and Artists
5

But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.

James Thurber

Spirit and Spirituality
6

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

James Thurber

Death and Dying
7

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

Comedy and Comedians
8

Discussion in America means dissent.

James Thurber

Dissent
9

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

James Thurber

Death and Dying
10

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style? and avoid How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?

James Thurber

Editing and Editors
11

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

Purpose
12

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.

James Thurber

President
13

From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. 'After dinner, the men moved into the living room'. I explained to the professor that this was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

James Thurber

Grammar
14

He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.

James Thurber

Attitude
15

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

James Thurber

Indecision
16

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

James Thurber

Dignity
17

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

James Thurber

Wit
18

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

James Thurber

Humour
19

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

James Thurber

Books and Reading
20

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

James Thurber

Men and Women
21

I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40.

James Thurber

Age and Aging
22

If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.

James Thurber

Theatre
23

In an extensive reading of recent books by psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and inspirationalists, I have discovered that they all suffer from one or more of these expression-complexes: italicizing, capitalizing, exclamation-pointing, multiple-interrogating, and itemizing. These are all forms of what the psychos themselves would call, if they faced their condition frankly, Rhetorical-Over-Compensation.

James Thurber

Psychology
24

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

James Thurber

Idleness
25

It takes that je ne sais quoi which we call sophistication for a woman to be magnificent in a drawing-room when her faculties have departed but she herself has not yet gone home.

James Thurber

Alcohol and Alcoholism
26

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

James Thurber

Wine
27

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

James Thurber

Question
28

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

James Thurber

Anger
29

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

James Thurber

Love
30

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

James Thurber

Love
31

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

Travel and Tourism
32

My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.

James Thurber

Drawing
33

My opposition -- To Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.

James Thurber

Interviews
34

Next to reasoning, the greatest handicap to the optimum development of Man lies in the fact that this planet is just barely habitable. Its minimum temperatures are too low, and its maximum temperatures too high. Its day is not long enough, and its night is too long. The disposition of its water and earth is distinctly unfortunate (the existence of the Mediterranean Sea in the place where we find it is perhaps the unhappiest accident in the whole firmament). These factors encourage depression, fear, war, and lack of vitality. They describe a planet, which is by no means perfectly devised for the nurturing or for the perpetuation of a higher intelligence.

James Thurber

World
35

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

Humankind
36

Philosophy offers the rather cold consolation that perhaps we and our planet do not actually exist; religion presents the contradictory and scarcely more comforting thought that we exist but that we cannot hope to get anywhere until we cease to exist. Alcohol, in attempting to resolve the contradiction, produces vivid patterns of Truth which vanish like snow in the morning sun and cannot be recalled; the revelations of poetry are as wonderful as a comet in the skies -- and as mysterious. Love, which was once believed to contain the Answer, we now know to be nothing more than an inherited behavior pattern.

James Thurber

Cosmos
37

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

James Thurber

Writers and Writing
38

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed -- but never the husband).

James Thurber

Sophistication
39

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

Speed
40

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

James Thurber

Economy and Economics
41

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

James Thurber

Apathy
42

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -- hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

James Thurber

Laughter
43

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

James Thurber

Comedy and Comedians
44

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

Humour
45

There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.

James Thurber

Light
46

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

Broadway
47

We are a nation that has always gone in for the loud laugh, the wow, the yak, the belly laugh, and the dozen other labels for the roll- em-in-the-aisles gagerissimo. This is the kind of laugh that delights actors, directors, and producers, but dismays writers of comedy because it is the laugh that often dies in the lobby. 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

Laughter
48

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

James Thurber

Conflict
49

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

James Thurber

Writers and Writing
50

While he was not as dumb as an ox, he was not any smarter either.

James Thurber

Character
51

Why do you have to a nonconformist like everybody else?

James Thurber

Conformity
52

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

James Thurber

Age and Aging
53

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

James Thurber

Lies and Lying
54

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

James Thurber

Persuasion

Showing items 1 - 25 of 54

A List of Famous James Thurber Quotes you can use this list to help make your own ranked list about this topic

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.

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

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.

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

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.

Discussion in America means dissent.

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

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.

From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. 'After dinner, the men moved into the living room'. I explained to the professor that this was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. When these things are raised to a high point they can become wit, but unlike the French and the English, we have not been much good at wit since the days of Benjamin Franklin.

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.

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

I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40.

If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.

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

It takes that je ne sais quoi which we call sophistication for a woman to be magnificent in a drawing-room when her faculties have departed but she herself has not yet gone home.

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

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

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.

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

Love is what you've been through with somebody.

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

My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.

My opposition -- To Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed -- but never the husband).

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.

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road.

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms -- hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.

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

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.

There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.

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.

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

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.

While he was not as dumb as an ox, he was not any smarter either.

Why do you have to a nonconformist like everybody else?

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and definite hardening of the paragraphs.

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.