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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

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

More quotes by 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.
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We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.
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Man is troubled by what might be called the Dog Wish, a strange and involved compulsion to be as happy and carefree as a dog
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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 can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
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Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling 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?'
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The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
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The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
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Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.
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I don't believe the writer should know too much where he's going. If he does, he runs into old man blueprint—old man propaganda.
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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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Men are more interesting than women, but women ae more fascinating.
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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.
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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He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
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.
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Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
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I was seized by the stern hand of Compulsion, that dark, unreasonable Urge that impels women to clean house in the middle of the night.
James Thurber
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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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Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with man is man.
James Thurber