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.
James Thurber
Women deserve to have more than twelve years between the ages of twenty-eight and forty.
James Thurber
The past is an old armchair in the attic, the present an ominous ticking sound, and the future is anybody's guess
James Thurber
Boys are beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of 18 months and 90 years.
James Thurber
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.
James Thurber
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
James Thurber
Let us not look back to the past with anger, nor towards the future with fear, but look around with awareness
James Thurber
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
James Thurber
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