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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
Shows
Harder
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Government
Actor
Scratch
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Becoming
Statesmen
Time
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Kennedy
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More quotes by 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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Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counselling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, 'How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?' and avoid 'How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?'
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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But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?
James Thurber
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Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.
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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Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.
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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Beautiful things don't ask for attention.
James Thurber
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Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
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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Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
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.
James Thurber
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Let the meek inherit the earth -- they have it coming to them.
James Thurber
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Columbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen, and in which almost everything has.
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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For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.
James Thurber
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The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.
James Thurber
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I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?
James Thurber
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Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.
James Thurber