Quote #47
The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms - hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
More from James Thurber
- With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.
- I always begin at the left with the opening word of the sentence and read toward the right and I recommend this method.
- 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…
- When all things are equal, translucence in writing is more effective than transparency, just as glow is more revealing than glare.
- Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, wh…
- Editing should be, especially in the case of old writers, a counseling rather than a collaborating task. The tendency of the writer-editor …
- Sophistication might be described as the ability to cope gracefully with a situation involving the presence of a formidable menace to one's…
- 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 …