Robert Benchley Quotes

Robert Benchley shares witty, plain-spoken musings on humor, writing and productivity.

44 quotes

1. The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall. ... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.

2. The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than 'The doctor will see you now.' I am willing to concede something to the phrase 'Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?' That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal 'The doctor will see you now.' But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

3. A baby is shown sitting on the floor. He appears to be about a year and a half old. Incidentally, he is a very plain baby. Strewn about him on the floor are the toys that he has been playing with. There are a ball, a rattle, a ring, a doll, a bell and a pair of roller-skates. Evidently, the candidate is supposed to be aghast at the roller-skates in the possession of such a small child. The man who drew that picture had evidently never furnished playthings for a small child. I can imagine nothing that would delight a child of a year and a half more than a pair of roller-skates to chew and spin and hit himself in the face with. They could also be dropped on Daddy when Daddy was lying on the floor in an attempt to be sociable. Of all the toys arranged before the child, the roller-skates are the most logical. ... That is my great trouble in taking tests and examinations of any kind. I always want to argue with the examiner, because the examiner is always so obviously wrong.

4. At fifteen one is first beginning to realize that everything isn't money and power in this world, and is casting about for joys that do not turn to dross in one's hands.

5. There are two classes of travel - first class, and with children.

6. I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who ... believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems.

7. Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

8. I don't want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something.... I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason.

9. The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him. That remark in itself wouldn't make any sense if quoted as it stands.

10. The only cure for a real hangover is death.

11. There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.

12. Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.

13. I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.

14. There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.

15. Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?

16. A great many people have come up to me and asked how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated.

17. The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

18. It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

19. So who's in a hurry?

20. I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.

21. Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.

22. Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

23. Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

24. Dachshunds are ideal dogs for small children, as they are already stretched and pulled to such a length that the child cannot do much harm one way or the other.

25. Death ends a life, not a relationship.

26. I have often wondered how they manage to get return envelopes which miss, by one-quarter of an inch, fitting the blank you are supposed to return. They say, "Please fill out and return the enclosed envelope," and the enclosed envelope is always one-quarter of an inch too small.

27. My first big mistake was made when, in a moment of weakness, I consented to learn the game; for a man who can frankly say "I do not play bridge" is allowed to go over in the corner and run the pianola by himself, while the poor neophyte, no matter how much he may protest that he isn't "at all a good player, in fact I'm perfectly rotten," is never believed, but dragged into a game where it is discovered, too late, that he spoke the truth.

28. You might think that after thousands of years of coming up too soon and getting frozen, the crocus family would have had a little sense knocked into it.

29. But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune 70 times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.

30. The naturalistic literature of this country has reached such a state that no family of characters is considered true to life whichdoes not include at least two hypochondriacs, one sadist, and one old man who spills food down the front of his vest.

31. I am both a public and a private school boy myself, having always changed schools just as the class in English in the new school was taking up Silas Marner, with the result that it was the only book in the English language that I knew until I was eighteen--but, boy, did I know Silas Marner!

32. After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get out a new book by him each year.

33. One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him. This department of the game has been allowed to run down fearfully.

34. Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.

35. Behind every argument is someone's ignorance. Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.

36. There seems to be a common strain of miserliness in the American people when it comes to throwing away toothpaste tubes which havea little left in the bottom.

37. People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but--" are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong. I never thought the time would come when I should catch myself leading off with that crack. But I feel it coming on right now.

38. Sunday morning may be cheery enough, with its extra cup of coffee and litter of Sunday newspapers, but there is always hanging over it the ominous threat of 3 P.M., when the sun gets around to the back windows and life stops dead in its tracks.

39. There is a note in the front of the volume saying that no public reading may be given without first getting the author's permission. It ought to be made much more difficult to do than that.

40. It is rather to be chosen than great riches, unless I have omitted something from the quotation.

41. Next to an old-fashioned church social, or possibly a monster bridge party, there is no buzz which can equal the sibilant buzz ofa matinée.

42. I haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an accent now.

43. Streets full of water. Please Advise.

44. I can get dressed earlier in the evening with every intention of going to a dance at midnight, but somehow after the theatre the thing to do seems to be either to go to bed or sit around somewhere. It doesn't seem possible that somewhere people can be expecting you at an hour like that.