“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
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James Thurber 90
American cartoonist, author, journalist, playwright 1894–1961Related quotes
“Imagination… its limits are only those of the mind itself.”
Session 273, Page 273
The Early Sessions: Sessions 1-42, 1997, The Early Sessions: Book 6
“The only limitations are those which we impose upon ourselves.”
A Narrative of Some of the Lord's Dealings with George Müller Written by Himself, Second Part.
Second Part of Narrative
“Our only limitations are those we set up in our own minds”
Variant: The only limitation is that which one sets up in one's own mind.
Source: Think and Grow Rich: The Landmark Bestseller - Now Revised and Updated for the 21st Century
Source: Locksley Hall Sixty Years After (1886), Line 131
On Representative Government (1861)
“Life is a comedy to those who think and a tragedy for those who feel.”
Letter to Anne, Countess of Ossory, (16 August 1776)
A favourite saying of Walpole's, it is repeated in other of his letters, and might be derived from a similar statement attributed to Jean de La Bruyère, though unsourced: "Life is a tragedy for those who feel, and a comedy for those who think". An earlier form occurs in another published letter:
I have often said, and oftener think, that this world is a comedy to those that think, a tragedy to those that feel — a solution of why Democritus laughed and Heraclitus wept.
Letter to Sir Horace Mann (31 December 1769)
Variant: The world is a comedy to those that think; a tragedy to those that feel.