James Thurber Quotes

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

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

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.

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

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.

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

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.

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

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

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 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.

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

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.

The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his.

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

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

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

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

Let us not look back in anger, nor 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 has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.