Quote

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

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James Thurber
Age: 66 †
Born: 1894
Born: December 18
Died: 1961
Died: November 2
Autobiographer
Cartoonist
Drawer
Humorist
Journalist
Novelist
Science Fiction Writer
Screenwriter
Writer
Columbus
Ohio
James Grover Thurber
Nature
Everywhere
Persons
Taking
Humorist
World
Fun
Identifies
People
Comedy
Satirist
Simply
Humorists
Purpose
Revealing
Makes
Wit
True
Apart

More quotes by James Thurber

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There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
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Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.
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There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
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I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that.
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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.
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You are all a lost generation, Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home. Ours was the generation that stayed up all night.
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Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.
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It was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them from our garden. 'I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber were dead, and I hate trees,' said Lisa.
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The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
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Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
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We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.
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Humourists lead... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.
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History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.
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Looks can be deceiving it's eating that's believing.
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The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
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He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
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When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
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The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
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