“The only rules comedy can tolerate are those of taste, and the only limitations those of libel.”
"The Duchess and the Bugs", 'Lanterns & Lances (1961). The piece was "a response" to an award Thurber received from the Ohioana Library Association in 1953.
From Lanterns and Lances
“A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps.”
note for "a future fable", "Such a Phrase as Drifts Through Dreams", Holiday Magazine; reprinted in Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances
Quoted in New York Post (30 June 1955)
Letters and interviews
“Moral: Where most of us end up there is no knowing, but the hellbent get where they are going.”
"The Wolf Who Went Places", The New Yorker, Page 28 http://archives.newyorker.com/?i=1956-05-19#folio=028 (19 May 1956); Further Fables for Our Time http://books.google.com/books?id=ZnhbAAAAMAAJ&q=%22moral+Where+most+of+us+end+up+there+is+no+knowing+but+the+hellbent+get+where+they+are+going%22&pg=PA28#v=onepage (1956)
From Fables for Our Time and Further Fables for Our Time
My Life And Hard Times, referring to a fellow Ohio State student and football star.
From other writings
Cartoon caption (1944), in which a dinner host is speaking to his guests about the wine, reproduced in The Thurber Carnival (1945).
Cartoon captions
“The heart has its reasons, which reason does not know.”
Cartoon caption, The New Yorker (27 July 1935)
Borrowing from Blaise Pascal, Pensées, 1670 (published posthumously): ""Le coeur a ses raisons que la raison ne connaît point""
Cartoon captions
“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.
Letter, March 11, 1954, to Malcolm Cowley. Collecting Himself (1989)
Letters and interviews
"The Case for Comedy", Lanterns & Lances (1961).
From Lanterns and Lances
“Women are wiser than men, because they know less and understand more.”
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