James Thurber Quotes (90 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

James Thurber

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

James Thurber

The Unicorn in the Garden

James Thurber

James Thurber: 90 quotes8 likes

Famous James Thurber Quotes

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

James Thurber

"The Shore and the Sea", Further Fables for Our Time (first publication, 1956)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“Beautiful things don't ask for attention.”

James Thurber book The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

Source: The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

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

James Thurber

"The Sheep in Wolf's Clothing", The New Yorker (29 April 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). The moral is ironic with respect to the fable, in which sheep do insufficient research before writing about wolves, resulting in the sheep being easy prey.
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time
Variant: Don't get it right, just get it written.

“Two is company, four is a party, three is a crowd. One is a wanderer.”

James Thurber

“"Who are you?" the minstrel asked. "I am the Golux," said the Golux, proudly, "the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device."”

James Thurber

The Thirteen Clocks (1951) page 32
From other fiction

“You mere device," he gnarled. "You platitude! Your Gollux ex machina!”

James Thurber book The 13 Clocks

The 13 Clocks

James Thurber Quotes about men

“Nowadays most men lead lives of noisy desperation.”

James Thurber

"The Grizzly and the Gadgets", The New Yorker (date unknown); Further Fables for Our Time (1956); This statement is derived from one of Henry David Thoreau: "The mass of men lead lives of quiet desperation."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

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

James Thurber

"The Crow and the Scarecrow", The New Yorker (date unknown); Further Fables for Our Time (1956). This is derived from Oscar Wilde's statement "All men kill the thing they love..."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“But those rare souls whose spirit gets magically into the hearts of men, leave behind them something more real and warmly personal than bodily presence, an ineffable and eternal thing. It is everlasting life touching us as something more than a vague, recondite concept. The sound of a great name dies like an echo; the splendor of fame fades into nothing; but the grace of a fine spirit pervades the places through which it has passed, like the haunting loveliness of mignonette.”

James Thurber

“The Book-End,” Columbus Dispatch (1923) Collecting Himself (1989).
From other writings

“Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.”

James Thurber

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“He picked out this sentence in a New Yorker casual of mine: "After dinner, the men moved into the living room," and he wanted to know why I, or the editors, had put in the comma. I could explain that one all night. I wrote back that this particular comma was Ross's way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up.”

James Thurber

The Years with Ross (Little Brown & Co, 1957, pg.267)

Variant: From one casual of mine he picked this sentence. “After dinner, the men moved into the living room.” I explained to the professor that this was Ross’s way of giving the men time to push back their chairs and stand up. There must, as we know, be a comma after every move, made by men, on this earth.

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988); Harold Ross was the editor of The New Yorker from its inception until 1951, and well-known for the overuse of commas
From other writings

“Women are wiser than men, because they know less and understand more.”

James Thurber

Quoted in: Kabir, Hajara Muhammad (2010). Northern women development. [Nigeria]. ISBN 978-978-906-469-4. OCLC 890820657. https://allauthor.com/quotes/42366/ From other writings

James Thurber Quotes about thinking

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

James Thurber

“She wasn't much to look at but she was something to think about.”

James Thurber

“From now on, I think it is safe to predict, neither the Democratic nor the Republican Party will ever nominate for President a candidate without good looks, stage presence, theatrical delivery, and a sense of timing.”

James Thurber

said of the Kennedy-Nixon TV debates in an unpublished manuscript, (dated 20 March 1961); Collecting Himself (1989).
From other writings

“Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light… We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think."…, but I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness.”

James Thurber

"Foreword", Lanterns & Lances (1961)
From other writings

“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.”

James Thurber

Quoted from an an interview with Glenna Syse in Time Magazine (New York, 15 August 1960); Times editors corrected Thurber's arithmetic
Letters and interviews

“It's a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.”

James Thurber

Cartoon caption (1944), in which a dinner host is speaking to his guests about the wine, reproduced in The Thurber Carnival (1945).
Cartoon captions

James Thurber: Trending quotes

“Walter Mitty: To see the world, things dangerous to come to, to see behind walls, draw closer, to find each other, and to feel. That is the purpose of life.”

James Thurber

“Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.”

James Thurber

Quoted in New York Post (29 February 1960)
Letters and interviews

“Let us not look back in anger, nor forward in fear, but around us in awareness.”

James Thurber

James Thurber Quotes

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

James Thurber

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

James Thurber

"The Scotty Who Knew Too Much", The New Yorker (18 February 1939)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“There are two kinds of light — the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures.”

James Thurber

Lanterns and Lances‎ (1961), p. 146; also misquoted as "There are two kinds of light — the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures."
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“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

“Sean O'Connell: Sometimes I don't. If I like a moment, for me, personally, I don't like to have the distraction of the camera. I just want to stay in it.”

James Thurber

“You are all a lost generation," Gertrude Stein said to Hemingway. We weren't lost. We knew where we were, all right, but we wouldn't go home. Ours was the generation that stayed up all night.”

James Thurber

Source: Selected Letters

“Love is what you've been through with somebody”

James Thurber

“Boys are perhaps beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of eighteen months and ninety years.”

James Thurber

"The Darlings at the Top of the Stairs", Lanterns & Lances (1961); previously appeared in The Queen and in Harper's Magazine.
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“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

"An Introduction", The Fireside Book of Dog Stories (Simon and Schuster, 1943); reprinted in Thurber's Dogs (1955)
From other writings

“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

"Carpe Noctem, If You Can", Credos and Curios (1962)
From other writings

“Remember laughter. You'll need it even in the blessed isles of Ever After.”

James Thurber book The 13 Clocks

Source: The 13 Clocks

“Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?”

James Thurber

Cartoon caption, The New Yorker (5 June 1937); "Word Dance--Part One", A Thurber Carnival (1960)
Cartoon captions
Source: Collecting Himself: James Thurber On Writing And Writers, Humor And Himself

“There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.”

James Thurber

“One (martini) is all right, two is too many, three is not enough.”

James Thurber

Quoted in Time Magazine (New York, 15 August 1960) from an an interview with Glenna Syse of the Chicago Sun-Times
Letters and interviews

“Time is for dragonflies and angels. The former live too little and the latter live too long.”

James Thurber book The 13 Clocks

Source: The 13 Clocks

“You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.”

James Thurber

"The Owl who was God", The New Yorker (29 April 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). Parody of "You can fool all the people some of the time and some of the people all of the time, but you cannot fool all the people all the time."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“The most dangerous food is wedding cake.”

James Thurber

“I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.”

James Thurber book The 13 Clocks

Source: The 13 Clocks

“Art – the one achievement of man which has made the long trip up from all fours seem well advised”

James Thurber

“Now I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance — a sharp, vindictive glance.”

James Thurber

"My Senegalese Birds and Siamese Cats", Holiday Magazine; reprinted in Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead.”

James Thurber

"The Shrike and the Chipmunks", The New Yorker (18 February 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). Because it is derived from Benjamin Franklin's famous saying this is often misquoted as: Early to rise and early to bed makes a man healthy, wealthy, and dead.
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“These are the days of bootleg love.”

James Thurber

“There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else.”

James Thurber

"The Fairly Intelligent Fly", The New Yorker (4 February 1939), a tale of a fly who avoided getting caught in an empty spider web, but then disregarding a warning by a bee, settled down among other flies he believed to be "dancing", and "became stuck to the flypaper with all the other flies."; Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940); Quote Investigator notes that this statement was referred to as "Thurber’s Law", in 1,001 Logical Laws (1979) https://quoteinvestigator.com/2019/07/21/safety/ Ref: en.wikiquote.org - James Thurber / Quotes / Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with Man is Man.”

James Thurber

"The Trouble with Man is Man", The New Yorker; reprinted in Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“For one thing, she pronounced flowers 'flars' and I couldn't let it slide.”

James Thurber

“Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death… others through sheer inability to cross the street.”

James Thurber

The Waves (1931)

“We all have faults, mine is being wicked.”

James Thurber

“You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward.”

James Thurber

"The Bear Who Let It Alone", The New Yorker (29 April 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“If I have sometimes seemed to make fun of Woman, I assure you it has only been for the purpose of egging her on.”

James Thurber

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act.”

James Thurber

Lanterns and Lances‎ (1961), p. 44
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“"To hell with the handkerchief," said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last.”

James Thurber book The Secret Life of Walter Mitty

The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (1942)
From other fiction

“I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.”

James Thurber

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews

“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.”

James Thurber

Letter, March 11, 1954, to Malcolm Cowley. Collecting Himself (1989)
Letters and interviews

“A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.”

James Thurber

"The Hunter and the Elephant", The New Yorker (18 February 1939)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“All right, have it your way — you heard a seal bark!”

James Thurber

Cartoon caption, The New Yorker (30 January 1932); "Women and Men", The Seal in the Bedroom and Other Predicaments (1932); also used in "The Lady on the Bookcase", Alarms and Diversions (1957).
Cartoon captions

“My drawings have been described as pre-intentionalist, meaning that they were finished before the ideas for them had occurred to me. I shall not argue the point.”

James Thurber

Interview, Life Magazine (New York, March 14, 1960).
Letters and interviews

“When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.”

James Thurber

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews

“If a playwright tried to see eye to eye with everybody, he would get the worst case of strabismus since Hannibal lost an eye trying to count his nineteen elephants during a snowstorm while crossing the Alps.”

James Thurber

Quoted in The New York Times (21 February 1960)
Letters and interviews

“The difference between our decadence and the Russians is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic.”

James Thurber

Quoted in The Observer (London, 5 February 1961).
Letters and interviews

“Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor to collaborate is natural, but he should say to himself, "How can I help this writer to say it better in his own style?" and avoid "How can I show him how I would write it, if it were my piece?"”

James Thurber

Memo to The New Yorker (1959); reprinted in New York Times Book Review (4 December 1988)
Letters and interviews

“Don't count your boobies until they are hatched.”

James Thurber book The Unicorn in the Garden

"The Unicorn in the Garden", The New Yorker (31 October 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“Humor and pathos, tears and laughter are, in the highest expression of human character and achievement, inseparable.”

James Thurber

"The Case for Comedy", Lanterns & Lances http://books.google.com/books?id=m0RZAAAAYAAJ&q=%22humor+and+pathos+tears+and+laughter+are+in+the+highest+expression+of+human+character+and+achievement+inseparable%22&pg=PA143#v=onepage (1961); previously appeared in The Atlantic Monthly November 1960 http://books.google.com/books?id=6q8GAQAAIAAJ&q=%22and+pathos+tears+and+laughter+are+in+the+highest+expression+of+human+character+and+achievement+inseparable%22&pg=PA98#v=onepage From Lanterns and Lances‎

“A word to the wise is not sufficient if it doesn't make any sense.”

James Thurber

"The Weaver and the Worm", The New Yorker ( 11 August 1956 http://www.newyorker.com/archive/1956/08/11/1956_08_11_019_TNY_CARDS_000252308); Further Fables for Our Time (1956) From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“It is better to have loafed and lost, than never to have loafed at all.”

James Thurber

"The Courtship of Arthur and Al", The New Yorker (26 August 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). Parody of Alfred Lord Tennyson's "Better to have loved and lost/than never to have loved at all."
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

“Discussion in America means dissent.”

James Thurber

"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances‎

“We all know that the theater and every play that comes to Broadway have within themselves, like the human being, the seed of self-destruction and the certainty of death. The thing is to see how long the theater, the play, and the human being can last in spite of themselves.”

James Thurber

Quoted in New York Times (21 February 1960).
Letters and interviews

“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

Television interview with Edward R. Murrow on TV show Small World, CBS-TV (25 March 1959); transcript published in New York Post
Letters and interviews

“Once upon a sunny morning a man who sat in a breakfast nook looked up from his scrambled eggs to see a white unicorn with a golden horn quietly cropping the roses in the garden. The man went up to the bedroom where his wife was still asleep and woke her. "There's a unicorn in the garden," he said. "Eating roses." She opened one unfriendly eye and looked at him. "The unicorn is a mythical beast," she said, and turned her back on him. The man walked slowly downstairs and out into the garden. The unicorn was still there; he was now browsing among the tulips.”

James Thurber book The Unicorn in the Garden

"The Unicorn in the Garden", The New Yorker (31 October 1939); Fables for Our Time & Famous Poems Illustrated (1940). This is a fable where a man sees a Unicorn in his garden, and his wife reports the matter to have him taken away, to the "booby-hatch". Online text with illustration by Thurber http://english.glendale.cc.ca.us/unicorn1.html From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time

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

James Thurber

The New Yorker (2 August 1930)
From other writings

“She came naturally by her confused and groundless fears, for 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 book My Life and Hard Times

My Life and Hard Times (1933) page 33, Harper & Row, New York.
From other writings