oh James

James Thurber

US author, cartoonist, humorist, & satirist (1894 – 1961)

Quotes that tickle my fancy:

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

He knows all about art, but he doesn’t know what he likes.

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.

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

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

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

There are two kinds of light–the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures.

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

Edward R. Murrow television interview
Her own mother lived the latter years of her life in the horrible suspicion that electricity was dripping invisibly all over the house.

My Life and Hard Times (1933)
Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?

New Yorker cartoon caption, June 5, 1937
You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.

New Yorker, Apr. 29, 1939
“The Bear Who Let It Alone” You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

New Yorker, Apr. 29, 1939
“The Owl who was God” Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.

Stumble It!