James Thurber Quotes

"Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person."
-James Thurber in Love quotes.

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

"I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed."
-James Thurber

"Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street."
-James Thurber

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

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

"The paths of glory at least lead to the grave, but the paths of duty may not get you any where."
-James Thurber

"Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house."
-James Thurber

"The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself."
-James Thurber in Humor quotes.

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

"I loathe the expression 'What makes him tick.' It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solution, 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

"Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation."
-James Thurber

"He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes."
-James Thurber

"Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility."
-James Thurber

"Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead."
-James Thurber

"Love is what you've been through with somebody."
-James Thurber in Love quotes.

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."
-James Thurber

"It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy."
-James Thurber

"It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers."
-James Thurber in Questioning quotes.

"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

"Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?"
-James Thurber

"Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness."
-James Thurber

"He who hesitates is sometimes saved."
-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

"The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel."
-James Thurber in Humor quotes.

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."
-James Thurber

"A woman's place is in the wrong."
-James Thurber