You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward. - James Thurber
The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel. - 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
Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility. - James Thurber
The dog has seldom been successful in pulling man up to its level of sagacity, but man has frequently dragged the dog down to his. - James Thurber
The jewels of sorrow last forever - 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
In his grief over the loss of a dog, a little boy stands for the first time on tiptoe, peering into the rueful morrow of manhood. After this most inconsolable of sorrows there is nothing life can do to him that he will not be able somehow to bear. - James Thurber
Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor. - James Thurber
A woman's place is in the wrong. - James Thurber
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
It had only one fault. It was kind of lousy. - James Thurber
He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes. - James Thurber
Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else? - James Thurber
Let us not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around us in awareness. - James Thurber
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone? - James Thurber
It is better to know some of the questions than all of the answers. - James Thurber
I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed. - James Thurber
Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation. - James Thurber
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. - James Thurber
Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised - James Thurber
All human beings should try to learn before they die what they are running from, and to, and why. - James Thurber
You can fool too many of the people too much of the time. - James Thurber
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
Human Dignity has gleamed only now and then and here and there, in lonely splendor, throughout the ages, a hope of the better men, never an achievement of the majority. - James Thurber
There are two kinds of light--the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. - 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 the home. - James Thurber
At least she's not guilty of integrity, and that's more than I can say of any Bell in four generations except my grandfather and myself. - James Thurber
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
Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years. - 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
Its better to know some of the questions, than all of the answers. - James Thurber
The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself. - James Thurber
I hate women because they always know where things are. - James Thurber
I think that maybe if women and children were in charge we would get somewhere. - James Thurber
Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house. - James Thurber
He who hesitates is sometimes saved. - James Thurber