Quote

I have the reputation for having read all of Henry James. Which would argue a misspent youth and middle age.

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
Youth
Middle
Age
Misspent
Read
Henry
Would
James
Argue
Arguing
Reputation

More quotes by James Thurber

Image
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
Image
Let the meek inherit the earth -- they have it coming to them.
James Thurber
Image
He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
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
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
Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.
James Thurber
Image
Dogs are obsessed with being happy.
James Thurber
Image
Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
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 write humor the way a surgeon operates, because it is a livelihood, because I have a great urge to do it, because many interesting challenges are set up, and because I have the hope it may do some good.
James Thurber
Image
Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
James Thurber
Image
The trouble with the lost generation is that it didn't get lost enough.
James Thurber
Image
There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
James Thurber
Image
For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.
James Thurber
Image
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
Image
The unicorn is a mythical beast.
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
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.
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
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