James Thurber Quotes & Sayings (Page 5)

“Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.”

“A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.”

“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.”

“Don't get it right, just get it written.”

“The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.”

“The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.”

“Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurity. Try to imagine a famous witty saying that is not immediately clear.”

“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.”

“The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.”

“The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep.”