James Thurber
The paths of glory at least lead to the Grave, but the paths of duty may not get you Anywhere.Collection: May
Until a man can quit talking loudly to himself in order to shout down the memories of blunderings and gropings, he is in no shape for the painstaking examination of distress.Collection: Memories
I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?Collection: Love
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.Collection: Home
At forty my faculties may have closed up like flowers at evening, leaving me unable to write my memoirs with a fitting and discreet inaccuracy, or, having written them, unable to carry them to the publisher.Collection: Flower
Men are more interesting than women, but women ae more fascinating.Collection: Women
The pounding of the cylinders increased: ta-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa-pocketa.Collection: Cylinders
When man gives up on reforming and inspiring society he also gives up his freedom.Collection: Giving Up
Most of the faint intimations of immortality of which we are occasionally aware would seem to arise out of Art or the materials of Art.Collection: Art
Though statisticians in our time have never kept the score, Man wants a great deal here below and Woman even more.Collection: Men
Love is blind, but desire just doesn't give a good goddamnCollection: Emo
The Old Man ain’t afraid of hellCollection: Men
Muggs was always sorry, Mother said, when he bit someone, but we could never understand how she figured this out. He didn't act sorry.Collection: Mother
Some American writers who have known each other for years have never met in the daytime or when both were sober.Collection: Writing
If you are a police dog, where's your badge?Collection: Dog
This is the posture of fortunes slave: one foot in the gravy, one foot in the grave.Collection: Ambition
One has but to observe a community of beavers at work in a stream to understand the loss in his sagacity, balance, co-operation, competence, and purpose which Man has suffered since he rose up on his hind legs. He began to chatter and he developed Reason, Thought, and Imagination, qualities which would get the smartest group of rabbits or orioles in the world into inextricable trouble overnight.Collection: Loss
He had as much fun in the water as any person I have known. You didn't have to throw a stick in the water to get him to go in. Of course, he would bring back a stick to you if you did throw one in. He would even have brought back a piano if you had thrown one in.Collection: Dog
Hundreds of hysterical persons must confuse these phenomena with messages from the beyond and take their glory to the bishop rather than the eye doctor.Collection: Atheist
No male can beat a female in the long run because they have it over us in sheer, damn longevity.Collection: Running
I don't remember any blue poodles.Collection: Blue
Authors of light pieces have, nobody knows why, a genius for getting into minor difficulties: they walk into the wrong apartments, they drink furniture polish for stomach bitters, they drive their cars into the prize tulip beds of haughty neighbors, they playfully slap gangsters, mistaking them for old school friends.Collection: Old School
Beautiful things don’t ask for attention.Collection: Beautiful
The act of writing is either something the writer dreads or actually likes, and I actually like it. Even re-writing’s fun. You’re getting somewhere, whether it seems to move or not.Collection: Fun