James Thurber (1894–1961) created some thirty volumes of humor, fiction, children’s books, cartoons, and essays in just about as many years. A founding member of The New Yorker staff, Thurber wrote and illustrated such enduring books as The Thurber Carnival and My Life and Hard Times, which have appeared in countless editions and dozens of languages throughout the world. I highly recommend James Thurber: Writings & Drawings (including The Secret Life of Walter Mitty), published by Library of America (1996).

To learn more about his life and work, please click here.

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These are among my favorite Thurber observations:

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

You can fool too many of the people too much of the time.

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

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

Humor is emotional chaos remembered in tranquility.

Women are wiser than men because they know less and understand more.

Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.

Nowadays men lead lives of noisy desperation.

I hate women because they always know where things are.

Laughter need not be cut out of anything, since it improves everything.

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

Discussion in America means dissent.

The wit makes fun of other persons; the satirist makes fun of the world; the humorist makes fun of himself, but in so doing, he identifies himself with people – that is, people everywhere, not for the purpose of taking them apart, but simply revealing their true nature.

Why do you have to be a nonconformist like everybody else?

There is no exception to the rule that every rule has an exception.

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

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.

Man is flying too fast for a world that is round. Soon he will catch up with himself in a great rear end collision.