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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

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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
Show
Scratches
Replete
History
Elders
Cato
Business
Younger
Elder
Tell
Proof
Proofs
Shows
Harder
Statesman
Government
Actor
Scratch
Find
Becoming
Statesmen
Time
Actors
Kennedy

More quotes by James Thurber

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Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.
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I hate women because they have brought into the currency of our language such expressions as all righty and yes indeedy and hundreds of others.
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I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that.
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I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle age.
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.
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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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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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I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?
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Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
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It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
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There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.
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Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.
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Love is what you've been through with somebody.
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For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.
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The wit makes fun of other persons the satirist makes fun of the world the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
James Thurber
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The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.
James Thurber
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Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.
James Thurber
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It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.
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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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