Quote

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband).

James Thurber

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Might
Involving
Butlers
Never
Described
Gracefully
Men
Presence
Poise
Bed
Sophistication
Husband
Formidable
Comedy
Prestige
Situation
Menace
Ability
Cope
Butler

More quotes by James Thurber

Image
American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can.
James Thurber
Image
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber
Image
My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.
James Thurber
Image
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.
James Thurber
Image
Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.
James Thurber
Image
Looks can be deceiving it's eating that's believing.
James Thurber
Image
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
James Thurber
Image
Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
James Thurber
Image
He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
James Thurber
Image
Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
James Thurber
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.
James Thurber
Image
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
James Thurber
Image
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
James Thurber
Image
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
Image
Men are more interesting than women, but women ae more fascinating.
James Thurber
Image
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James Thurber
Image
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