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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

More quotes by James Thurber

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American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can.
James Thurber
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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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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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Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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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
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You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
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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I could have killed Gregory Fitzhurst at three hundred feet with my left hand.
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
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The unicorn is a mythical beast.
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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Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
James Thurber
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For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.
James Thurber
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I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.
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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This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.
James Thurber
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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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Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
James Thurber
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A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.
James Thurber