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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
Character
Pathos
Human
Inseparable
Humans
Laughter
Achievement
Tears
Highest
Expression
Humor

More quotes by 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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Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority.
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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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My opposition to Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expression, and that such oral give and take helps to perpetuate the decline of the English language.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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God bless... God damn.
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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The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell
James Thurber
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The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.
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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I myself have known some profoundly thoughtful dogs.
James Thurber
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There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
James Thurber
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Beautiful things don't ask for attention.
James Thurber
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He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
James Thurber
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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.
James Thurber
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There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.
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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Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
James Thurber
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Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
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