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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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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
Better
Throughout
Human
Lonely
Humans
Achievement
Never
Dignity
Men
Majority
Age
Gleamed
Hope
Splendor
Character
Ages

More quotes by 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.
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The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell
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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?
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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!
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Humourists lead... an existence of jumpiness and apprehension. They sit on the edge of the chair of Literature. In the house of Life they have the feeling that they have never taken off their overcoats.
James Thurber
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Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.
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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Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
James Thurber
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The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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Beautiful things don't ask for attention.
James Thurber
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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.
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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The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough.
James Thurber
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
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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Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.
James Thurber
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I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?
James Thurber
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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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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