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
Topics: Economics, Economy
The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody’s guess
—James Thurber
Topics: Future
Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.
—James Thurber
Topics: Silence
Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.
—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
Topics: Youth
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
Topics: Theater
I love the idea of there being two sexes, don’t you?
—James Thurber
Topics: Men & Women, Men, Women
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
He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.
—James Thurber
Topics: Attitude
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
Topics: Reading, Books
The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
—James Thurber
Topics: Comedy
Discussion in America means dissent.
—James Thurber
Topics: Dissent
With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.
—James Thurber
Topics: Age, Aging, Writing
A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn’t make sense.
—James Thurber
Topics: Wisdom
The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms—hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
—James Thurber
Topics: Laughter
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
Topics: Dogs
Precision of communication is important, more important than ever in our era of hair-trigger balances, when a false, or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.
—James Thurber
Topics: Communication
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
—James Thurber
Topics: Questions
Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
—James Thurber
Topics: Health, Dying, Death
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
Topics: Humor
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
Topics: Presidency
All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.
—James Thurber
Topics: Hate
All men should strive to learn, before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
—James Thurber
Topics: Purpose, Discovery, Self-Discovery
Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.
—James Thurber
Topics: Love
In his grief over the loss of a dog. a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood.
—James Thurber
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
Topics: The Universe
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
Topics: Authors & Writing
It is a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you will be amused by its presumption.
—James Thurber
Topics: Wine
Let us not look back to the past with anger, nor towards the future with fear, but look around with awareness
—James Thurber
Topics: Awareness
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
—James Thurber
Topics: Lying, Lies, Trust
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