James Thurber

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

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

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.

James Thurber

One martini is alright, two is too many, three is not enough.

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

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

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

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.

James Thurber

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

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 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

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

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.

James Thurber

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

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

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

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

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive glance.

James Thurber

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

James Thurber