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

More quotes by James Thurber

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A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of the home.
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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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).
James Thurber
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Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.
James Thurber
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God bless... God damn.
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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Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
James Thurber
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Let the meek inherit the earth -- they have it coming to them.
James Thurber
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Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
James Thurber
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
James Thurber
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The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.
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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American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can.
James Thurber
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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!
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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Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
James Thurber
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The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
James Thurber
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Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
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 pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
James Thurber