Quote

Comedy has ceased to be a challenge to the mental processes. It has become a therapy of relaxation, a kind of tranquilizing drug.

James Thurber

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Humor
Tranquilizing
Comedy
Ceased
Challenges
Relaxation
Process
Processes
Become
Therapy
Kind
Mental
Challenge
Drug

More quotes by James Thurber

Image
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
Image
He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
James Thurber
Image
History is replete with proofs, from Cato the Elder to Kennedy the Younger, that if you scratch a statesman you find an actor, but it is becoming harder and harder, in our time, to tell government from show business.
James Thurber
Image
The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
James Thurber
Image
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
James Thurber
Image
When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
James Thurber
Image
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.
James Thurber
Image
I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle age.
James Thurber
Image
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
Image
The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.
James Thurber
Image
The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
James Thurber
Image
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James Thurber
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
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
Image
Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber
Image
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James Thurber
Image
Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!
James Thurber
Image
The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
James Thurber