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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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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
Human
Inseparable
Humans
Laughter
Achievement
Tears
Highest
Expression
Humor
Character
Pathos

More quotes by James Thurber

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I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
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Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
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Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.
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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.
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Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.
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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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American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can.
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God bless... God damn.
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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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He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
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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.
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Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.
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My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.
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Dogs are obsessed with being happy.
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I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every year, I'd only be 48. That's the trouble with us. We number everything. Take women, for example. I think they deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of 28 and 40.
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I loathe the expression “What makes him tick.” It is the American mind, looking for simple and singular solutions, that uses the foolish expression. A person not only ticks, he also chimes and strikes the hour, falls and breaks and has to be put together again, and sometimes stops like an electric clock in a thunderstorm.
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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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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
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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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Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
James Thurber