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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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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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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There are several ways to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory.
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Who has not wished that his host would come out frankly at the beginning of the visit and state, in no uncertain terms, the rulesand preferences of the household in such matters as the breakfast hour? And who has not sounded out his guest to find out what he likes in the regulation of his diet and modus vivendi (mode of living)?
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One of the great natural phenomena is the way in which a tube of toothpaste suddenly empties itself when it hears that you are planning a trip, so that when you come to pack it is just a twisted shell of its former self, with not even a cubic millimeter left to be squeezed out.
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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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What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up?... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.
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Work is a form of nervousness.
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A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
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The discovery of phobias by psychiatrists has done much to clear the atmosphere. Whereas in the old days a person would say: 'Let's get the heck out of here!' today she says: 'Let's get the heck out of here! I've got claustrophobia.
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Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper.
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This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as regulations but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny.
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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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A child of three cannot raise its chubby fist to its mouth to remove a piece of carpet which it is through eating, without being made the subject of a psychological seminar of child-welfare experts, and written up, along with five hundred other children of three who have put their hands to their mouths for the same reason.
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Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.
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Except for an occasional heart attack I feel as young as I ever did.
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Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one
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If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.
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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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