Quote

There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

Robert Benchley

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Robert Benchley
Age: 56 †
Born: 1889
Born: September 15
Died: 1945
Died: November 21
Actor
Humorist
Journalist
Screenwriter
Worcester
Massachusetts
First
Public
Note
Much
Getting
Author
Made
Reading
Notes
Difficult
Fronts
Given
Front
May
Ought
Firsts
Comedy
Volume
Without
Saying
Permission

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Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.
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The art of cursing people seems to have lost its tang since the old days when a good malediction took four deep breaths to deliverand sent the outfielders scurrying toward the fence to field.
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If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios.
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We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.
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Sheer madness is, of course, the highest possible brow in humor.
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For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush, we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting.
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In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs.
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There seems to be a common strain of miserliness in the American people when it comes to throwing away toothpaste tubes which havea little left in the bottom.
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I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen--but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!
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Next to an old-fashioned church social, or possibly a monster bridge party, there is no buzz which can equal the sibilant buzz ofa matinée.
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It was one of those plays in which all of the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly.
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I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.
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I have often wondered how they manage to get return envelopes which miss, by one-quarter of an inch, fitting the blank you are supposed to return. They say, Please fill out and return the enclosed envelope, and the enclosed envelope is always one-quarter of an inch too small.
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The only cure for a real hangover is death.
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There is no doubt that every healthy, normal boy...should own a dog at some time in his life, preferably between the ages of forty-five and fifty.
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Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.
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In Milwaukee last month a man died laughing over one of his own jokes. That's what makes it so tough for us outsiders. We have to fight home competition.
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But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.
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A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stairs.
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It has always seemed to me that the most difficult part of building a bridge would be the start.
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