"Boys are perhaps beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of eighteen months and ninety years."

James Thurber Journalism See all quotes by James Thurber →

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More by James Thurber

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

“All men kill the thing they hate, too, unless, of course, it kills them first.”

“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.”

“It's a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption.”

“Somebody has said that woman's place is in the wrong. That's fine. What the wrong needs is a woman's presence and a woman's touch. She is far better equipped than men to set it right.”

“With 60 staring me in the face, I have developed inflammation of the sentence structure and a definite hardening of the paragraphs.”

Resonant Thoughts

"To seek understanding before taking action, yet to trust my instincts when action is called for. Never to avoid danger from fear, never to seek out danger for its own sake. Never to conform to fashion…"

— Steven Brust

Literature1955

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"In chess, we say that the player with the initiative is obliged to attack, otherwise the initiative will be lost and the counterattack will likely be decisive."

— Garry Kasparov

Politics1963

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"2) We, on our part, would agree — upon the establishment of adequate arrangements through the United Nations to ensure the carrying out and continuation of these commitments — to remove promptly the q…"

— John F. Kennedy

Politics

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"From Mongheir I embarked, and returned by water to Calcutta; and here I had an opportunity of observing a series of scenery perfectly new; the different boats of the country, and the varied shores of …"

— William Hodges

Politics1854–1881

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