JAMES THURBER

Old age is the most unexpected of all the things that can happen to a man.

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

The sanity of the average banquet speaker lasts about two and a half months; at the end of that time he begins to mutter to himself, and calls out in his sleep.

Humor is a serious thing. I like to think of it as one of our greatest earliest natural resources, which must be preserved at all cost.

Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.

Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's poise and prestige (such as the butler, or the man under the bed - but never the husband).

Love is the strange bewilderment that overtakes one person on account of another person.

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.

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

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

The dog has got more fun out of Man than Man has got out of the dog, for the clearly demonstrable reason that Man is the more laughable of the two animals.

There is something about a poet which leads us to believe that he died, in many cases, as long as 20 years before his birth.

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

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

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

Sixty minutes of thinking of any kind is bound to lead to confusion and unhappiness.

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

The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess.

Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.

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

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

But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep?

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

The nation that complacently and fearfully allows its artists and writers to become suspected rather than respected is no longer regarded as a nation possessed with humor or depth.

Love is what you've been through with somebody.