Quote

Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.

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
Human
Inseparable
Humans
Laughter
Achievement
Tears
Highest
Expression
Humor
Character
Pathos

More quotes by 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 pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.
James Thurber
Image
Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
James Thurber
Image
Columbus is a town in which almost anything is likely to happen, and in which almost everything has.
James Thurber
Image
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
Image
The wit makes fun of other persons the satirist makes fun of the world the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people - that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.
James Thurber
Image
Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I've not seen!
James Thurber
Image
There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
James Thurber
Image
Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.
James Thurber
Image
Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
James Thurber
Image
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James Thurber
Image
American girls often marry someone they can't stand to spite someone they can.
James Thurber
Image
So much has already been written about everything that you can't find out anything about it.
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
I drew pictures rapidly and with few lines, because I had to write most of the pieces, too, and couldn't monkey long with the drawings. The divine urge was no higher than that.
James Thurber
Image
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
James Thurber
Image
I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness.
James Thurber
Image
The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell
James Thurber
Image
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
Image
He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
James Thurber