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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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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
Women
Humor
Impels
Hand
Seized
Middle
Stern
Dark
Unreasonable
Funny
Compulsion
House
Urge
Night
Urges
Hands
Clean

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No male can beat a female in the long run because they have it over us in sheer, damn longevity.
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A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.
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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.
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Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
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Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
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If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.
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A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home.
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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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Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
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The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough.
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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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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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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.
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American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can.
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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).
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You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
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Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
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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.
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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.
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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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