James Thurber quote: "It didn't work," said the King. "The cloak of invisibility didn't work."<br />"Yes, it did," said the Royal Wizard.<br />"No, it didn't," said the King. "I kept bumping into things, the same as ever."<br />"The cloak is supposed to make you invisible," said the Royal Wizard. "It is not supposed to keep you from bumping into things."<br />"All I know is, I kept bumping into things," said the King."

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.
JAMES THURBER

Love is what you've been through with somebody.
JAMES THURBER

I loathe the expression What makes him tick. It is the American mind, looking for simple and singula...
JAMES THURBER

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, ...
JAMES THURBER

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating t...
JAMES THURBER

Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both...
JAMES THURBER

When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow...
JAMES THURBER

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obsc...
JAMES THURBER

A lady of forty-seven who had been married twenty-seven years and has six children knows what love r...
JAMES THURBER

There are two kinds of light--the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.
JAMES THURBER

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness. -James Thurber.
JAMES THURBER

The dog has got more fun out of man than man has got out of the dog, for man is the more laughable...
JAMES THURBER

I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?
JAMES THURBER

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER

Humor does not include sarcasm, invalid irony, sardonicism, innuendo, or any other form of cruelty. ...
JAMES THURBER

One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his saga...
JAMES THURBER

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.
JAMES THURBER

A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make sense.
JAMES THURBER

With sixty staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and defin...
JAMES THURBER

I'm 65 and I guess that puts me in with the geriatrics. But if there were fifteen months in every ye...
JAMES THURBER

Art -- the one achievement of Man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised.
JAMES THURBER

I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I rec...
JAMES THURBER

While he was not as dumb as an ox, he was not any smarter either.
JAMES THURBER

From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will eve...
JAMES THURBER

You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.
JAMES THURBER

It is better to have loafed and lost than never to have loafed at all.
JAMES THURBER

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms
JAMES THURBER

The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathe...
JAMES THURBER

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness.
JAMES THURBER

It takes that je ne sais quoi which we call sophistication for a woman to be magnificent in a drawin...
JAMES THURBER

He was always leaning forward, pushing something invisible ahead of him.
JAMES THURBER

My drawings have been described as pre-internationalist, meaning that they were finished before the ...
JAMES THURBER

A drawing is always dragged down to the level of its caption.
JAMES THURBER

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

Comedy has to be done en clair. You can't blunt the edge of wit or the point of satire with obscurit...
JAMES THURBER

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the p...
JAMES THURBER

Why do you have to a nonconformist like everybody else?
JAMES THURBER

Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?
JAMES THURBER

The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how t...
JAMES THURBER

Discussion in America means dissent.
JAMES THURBER

Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take t...
JAMES THURBER

It's a na?ve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption...
JAMES THURBER

There are two kinds of light -- the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.
JAMES THURBER

We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the ...
JAMES THURBER

A peril of the night road is that flecks of dust and streaks of bug blood on the windshield look to ...
JAMES THURBER

Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the a...
JAMES THURBER

From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. 'After dinner, the men moved into the living room'....
JAMES THURBER

Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There i...
JAMES THURBER

My opposition To Interviews lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of expr...
JAMES THURBER

In an extensive reading of recent books by psychologists, psychoanalysts, psychiatrists, and inspira...
JAMES THURBER

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
JAMES THURBER

All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER

Every man is occasionally visited by the suspicion that the planet on which he is riding is not real...
JAMES THURBER

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages o...
JAMES THURBER

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages...
JAMES THURBER

It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers.
JAMES THURBER

But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something...
JAMES THURBER

I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what s...
JAMES THURBER

The most dangerous food is wedding cake.
JAMES THURBER

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.
JAMES THURBER

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the p...
JAMES THURBER

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.
JAMES THURBER

Love is what you've been through with somebody.
JAMES THURBER

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.
JAMES THURBER

Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.
JAMES THURBER

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is an...
JAMES THURBER

The difference between our decadence and the Russians' is that while theirs is brutal, ours is a...
JAMES THURBER

The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, can...
JAMES THURBER

It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its pre...
JAMES THURBER

In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into ...
JAMES THURBER

The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequentl...
JAMES THURBER

I'll never know the right answer for sex and marriage, sense and mirage.
JAMES THURBER

Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around in awareness.
JAMES THURBER

Don't get it right, just get it written
JAMES THURBER

Early to rise and early to bed Makes a male healthy, wealthy and dead
JAMES THURBER

A husband should not insult his wife publicly, at parties. He should insult her in the privacy of th...
JAMES THURBER

A woman's place is in the wrong.
JAMES THURBER

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and...
JAMES THURBER

If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus si...
JAMES THURBER

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.
JAMES THURBER

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear...
JAMES THURBER

Philosophy offers the rather cold consolation that perhaps we and our planet do not actually exist; ...
JAMES THURBER

Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dri...
JAMES THURBER

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER

I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me ...
JAMES THURBER

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?
JAMES THURBER

There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
JAMES THURBER

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER

The paths of glory at least lead to the grave, but the paths of duty may not get you any where.
JAMES THURBER

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.
JAMES THURBER

It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy.
JAMES THURBER

I loathe the expression "What makes him tick." It is the American mind, looking for simple and singu...
JAMES THURBER

I hate women because they always know where things are.
JAMES THURBER

He who hesitates is sometimes saved.
JAMES THURBER

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes.
JAMES THURBER

All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER

Next to reasoning, the greatest handicap to the optimum development of Man lies in the fact that thi...
JAMES THURBER

There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.
JAMES THURBER

Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.
JAMES THURBER

The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable re...
JAMES THURBER

If it continues, he's toast.
JAMES THURBER

Let us not look back in anger or forward in fear, but around in awareness
JAMES THURBER

Early to rise and early to bed Makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead
JAMES THURBER

I hate women because they always know where things are
JAMES THURBER

Let the meek inherit the earth - they have it coming to them
JAMES THURBER

No male can beat a female in the long run because they have it over us in sheer, damn longevity
JAMES THURBER

With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a defini...
JAMES THURBER

seems to be exceeding the quota one or two.
JAMES THURBER

The question of whether the vice president was involved, we'll probably never know. But it was prett...
JAMES THURBER

DeLay knows that reciprocity is the strongest norm in Washington. The clients know they have a relat...
JAMES THURBER

This is a very black day for the White House, and it's going to be very hard for the president to di...
JAMES THURBER

It's going to be almost impossible to overcome the perception about the president that he didn't sho...
JAMES THURBER

Katrina took away his agenda, and maybe his image as a leader, unless he pulls it out in the next fe...
JAMES THURBER

I think that if he doesn't do well with the high-profile races where he's appearing, it could hurt h...
JAMES THURBER

running away from the president on the war and Katrina.
JAMES THURBER

Politically, this is very serious for the president. If the base of his party has lost faith, that c...
JAMES THURBER

There is, of course, a certain amount of drudgery in newspaper work, just as there is in teaching cl...
JAMES THURBER

One martini is all right. Two are too many, and three are not enough.
JAMES THURBER

what they are running from, and to, and why.
JAMES THURBER

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.
JAMES THURBER

Love is blind, but desire just doesn't give a good goddamn
JAMES THURBER

There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20...
JAMES THURBER

Ours is a precarious language, as every writer knows, in which the merest shadow line often separate...
JAMES THURBER

We all have faults, and mine is being wicked.
JAMES THURBER

Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating t...
JAMES THURBER

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms / hollow, heartless, mirth...
JAMES THURBER

It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers
JAMES THURBER

All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.
JAMES THURBER

Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... ...
JAMES THURBER

One martini is all right, two is two many, three is not enough
JAMES THURBER

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is an...
JAMES THURBER

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive g...
JAMES THURBER

There are two kinds of light - the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.
JAMES THURBER

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER

Last night I dreamed of a small consolation enjoyed only by the blind: Nobody knows the trouble I...
JAMES THURBER

The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable re...
JAMES THURBER

Beautiful things don't ask for attention.
JAMES THURBER

He is perceived to be a liability at this point, and it's not just what comes from this particular c...
JAMES THURBER

The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthle...
JAMES THURBER

The most dangerous food is wedding cake
JAMES THURBER

It's a naive domestic little Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its pres...
JAMES THURBER

You may as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward
JAMES THURBER

Karl Rove is a great guy in terms of developing issues for a campaign, but he's not done well on adv...
JAMES THURBER

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive g...
JAMES THURBER

You have made the moon," The Jester said. "That is the moon.
JAMES THURBER

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of h...
JAMES THURBER

It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all
JAMES THURBER

It's a naive domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption...
JAMES THURBER

A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands
JAMES THURBER

I have always thought of a dog lover as a dog that was in love with another dog
JAMES THURBER

A lady of forty-seven who had been married twenty-seven years and has six children knows what love r...
JAMES THURBER

There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception
JAMES THURBER

A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps
JAMES THURBER

My opposition [To Interviews] lies in the fact that offhand answers have little value or grace of ex...
JAMES THURBER

Philosophy offers the rather cold consolation that perhaps we and our planet do not actually exist; ...
JAMES THURBER

Let us not look back to the past with anger, nor towards the future with fear, but look around with ...
JAMES THURBER

A lady of 47 who has been married 27 years and has 6 children knows what love really is and once des...
JAMES THURBER

I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance - a sharp, vindictive g...
JAMES THURBER

Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, w...
JAMES THURBER

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that t...
JAMES THURBER

I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere.
JAMES THURBER

One martini is alright, two is too many, three is not enough.
JAMES THURBER

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist an...
JAMES THURBER

Time lies frozen there. It's always Then. It's never Now.
JAMES THURBER

He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes
JAMES THURBER

Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that t...
JAMES THURBER

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather...
JAMES THURBER

Walter Mitty: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to fi...
JAMES THURBER

Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the ...
JAMES THURBER

Taking a single letter from the alphaber," he said, "should make life simpler."

"I don't ...
JAMES THURBER

She has a memory of trees and fields and nothing more.
JAMES THURBER

This is an old story that keeps repeating: The people who are way out there and pushing the limits o...
JAMES A. THURBER

I tell our customers that their goal should be to get their wired networks as secure as their wirele...
ALEX THURBER

To become a Premier-level partner, you have to know wireless just as well as our other technologies....
ALEX THURBER

Not only can the partner sell the CSC module and make a profit on the initial sale, but also each ye...
ALEX THURBER

We've been looking at this whole idea for quite some time and figuring out if it's complementary to ...
ALEX THURBER

We're ultimately driving toward the whole idea of the connected building, everything on one wire.
ALEX THURBER

Today it's not enough to just install the infrastructure for businesses that are more and more depen...
ALEX THURBER

Time heals nothing. Wounds fester and ooze. Life drags you by a rope over rocks and stones and one d...
BOB THURBER

Richie Rich, Keoki, Amanda LaPore are really successful. They've joined the culture at large.
JAMES ST. JAMES

I came to NYU to study experimental theater. Shortly thereafter, I was featured in a 'Newsweek&#...
JAMES ST. JAMES

The true nature of evil is that it is so very casual.
JAMES ST. JAMES

Why, oh why, must we always go through pigs to get our truffles?
JAMES ST. JAMES

I would go to the all-night grocery store and pretend that I was at Studio 54 because it was the onl...
JAMES ST. JAMES

We danced on the lip of the volcano, so to speak. We were young, too. And New York was still a big, ...
JAMES ST. JAMES

I'll always be a party monster. I'll always love getting dressed up.
JAMES ST. JAMES

As for my identity within the context of New York nightlife? I left in the '90s, so I'm not ...
JAMES ST. JAMES

I was definitely the oddball freak show in school.
JAMES ST. JAMES

When my trust fund ran out, I panicked. I have a lot of admiration for the kids who come to the big ...
JAMES ST. JAMES

I think that when you are a teenager, it's the smartest you will ever be in your life. Teenagers...
JAMES ST. JAMES

Watch out for the average--they're usually hiding something big.
JAMES ST. JAMES

There are people who have too much space between their ears, and given the time, do nothing but free...
JAMES ST. JAMES

War is devastating, and it leaves its scars for generations.
JAMES BLUNT

National honor is the national property of the highest value.
JAMES MONROE

Every person is created in the image of God and has value. Every person. Every person is to be treat...
JAMES LANKFORD

People don't realize you're blowing over changes, time changes, harmony, different keys. I m...
JAMES MCBRIDE

From there, I tried out for a community theatre play, joined an improv group... it all started openi...
KEVIN JAMES

My favorite movie of all time is 'Rocky.'
KEVIN JAMES

Every time I do a movie where it gets physical, I say never again.
KEVIN JAMES

I really wasn't a class clown.
KEVIN JAMES

James Thurber

Share:

Related

More James Thurber