A lady of forty-seven who had been married twenty-seven years and has six children knows what love really is and once described it for me like this: ‘Love is what you’ve been through with somebody.’ – James Thurber
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. – James Thurber
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons. – James Thurber
All men should strive to learn before they die, what they are running from, and to, and why. – James Thurber
The difference between our decadence and the Russians’ is that while theirs is brutal, ours is apathetic. – James Thurber
There are two kinds of light – the glow that illuminates, and the glare that obscures. – James Thurber
Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision. – James Thurber
The animals that depend on instinct have an inherent knowledge of the laws of economics and of how to apply them; Man, with his powers of reason, has reduced economics to the level of a farce which is at once funnier and more tragic than Tobacco Road. – James Thurber
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
Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man. – James Thurber
But what is all this fear of and opposition to Oblivion? What is the matter with the soft Darkness, the Dreamless Sleep? – 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
I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance – a sharp, vindictive glance. – James Thurber
I used to wake up at 4 A.M. and start sneezing, sometimes for five hours. I tried to find out what sort of allergy I had but finally came to the conclusion that it must be an allergy to consciousness. – James Thurber
