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

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
Limitations
Tolerate
Limitation
Dignity
Rules
Taste
Comedy
Libel

More quotes by 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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The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
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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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
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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.
James Thurber
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Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
James Thurber
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My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.
James Thurber
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This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.
James Thurber
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Love is what you've been through with somebody.
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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Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
James Thurber
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Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!
James Thurber
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Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.
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
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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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He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
James Thurber
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The unicorn is a mythical beast.
James Thurber
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But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
James Thurber
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He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
James Thurber
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God bless... God damn.
James Thurber