Writers of comedy have outlook, whereas writers of tragedy have, according to them, insight.
Surely no other American institution is so bound around and tightened up by rules, strictures, adages, and superstitions as the Broadway theatre.
A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands.
A wet dog is lovingest.
The paths of glory at least lead to the Grave, but the paths of duty may not get you Anywhere.
Though statisticians in our time have never kept the score, Man wants a great deal here below and Woman even more.
The things we laugh at are awful while they are going on, but get funny when we look back. And other people laugh because they’ve been through it too. The closest thing to humor is tragedy.
So much has already been written about everything that you can’t find out anything about it.
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.
The Old Man ain’t afraid of hell.
A woman’s place is in the wrong.
Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.
She wasn’t much to look at but she was something to think about.
It was Lisa, aged five, whose mother asked her to thank my wife for the peas we had sent them from our garden. ‘I thought the peas were awful, I wish you and Mrs. Thurber were dead, and I hate trees,’ said Lisa.
For one thing, she pronounced flowers ‘flars’ and I couldn’t let it slide.
Mutual suspicions of mental inadequacy are common during the first year of any marriage.
I can feel a thing I cannot touch and touch a thing I cannot feel. The first is sad and sorry, the second is your heart.
Youcanfooltoomanyofthepeopletoomuchofthetime. See Lincoln 510:35.
When man gives up on reforming and inspiring society he also gives up his freedom.
I do not have a psychiatrist and I do not want one, for the simple reason that if he listened to me long enough, he might become disturbed.