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

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
Wells
Backwards
Might
Compromise
Well
Risk
Face
Backward
Faces
Lean
Funny
Gambling
Fall
Flat
Inspirational
Flats

More quotes by James Thurber

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I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle age.
James Thurber
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Comedy has ceased to be a challenge to the mental processes. It has become a therapy of relaxation, a kind of tranquilizing drug.
James Thurber
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Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.
James Thurber
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I write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
James Thurber
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Muggs was always sorry, Mother said, when he bit someone, but we could never understand how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry.
James Thurber
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I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.
James Thurber
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I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, 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
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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.
James Thurber
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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
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Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
James Thurber
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American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can.
James Thurber
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Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
James Thurber
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Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.
James Thurber
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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
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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
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The paths of glory at least lead to the Grave, but the paths of duty may not get you Anywhere.
James Thurber
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber