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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
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

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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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He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
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Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
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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.
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Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.
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This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.
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So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.
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I make mistakes, but I am on the side of Good, the Golux said, by accident and happenchance. I had high hopes of being Evil when I was two, but in my youth I came upon a firefly burning in a spider's web. I saved the victim's life. The firefly's ? said the minstrel. The spider's. The blinking arsonist had set the web on fire.
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Dogs are obsessed with being happy.
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I'm sixty-five and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics, but if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be forty-eight.
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Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
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Beautiful things don't ask for attention.
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Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
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It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
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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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Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.
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Love is what you've been through with somebody.
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