Robert Benchley Quotes

There is probably no moment more appalling than that in which the tongue comes suddenly upon the ragged edge of a space from which the old familiar filling has disappeared.

A man gets on a train with his little boy, and gives the conductor only one ticket. 'How old's your kid?' the conductor says, and the father says, 'He's four years old.' 'He looks at least twelve to me,' says the conductor. And the father says, 'Can I help it if he worries?

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born. We are constantly remarking on the fact that things are done well by people other than ourselves. "The Japanese are a remarkable little people," we say, as if we were doing them a favor. "He is an Arab, but you ought to hear him play the zither." Why "but"?

I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.

Most of the arguments to which I am party fall somewhat short of being impressive, owing to the fact that neither I nor my opponent knows what we are talking about.

In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop.

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

My only solution for the problem of habitual accidents is to stay in bed all day. Even then, there is always the chance that you will fall out.

We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.

The only cure for a real hangover is death.

For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it," they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.

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

The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.

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.

Other men wear white suits in summer and it doesn't seem to bother them. But my white suit seems to be a little whiter than theirs. I think also that it may have something written on the back of it, although I can't find it when I take the suit off.

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

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.

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.

In preparing the soil for planting, you will need several tools. Dynamite would be a beautiful thing to use, but it would have a tendency to get the dirt into the front-hall and track up the stairs.

I can remember the day when all that a professor was supposed to do was to mark "C minus" on students' examination papers, then gohome to tea. Nowadays they seem to feel that they must know just how much we (outside the university) eat, what we do with our spare time, and how we like our eggs.

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

I never knew anyone yet who got up at six who did anything more useful between that time and breakfast than banging a tennis ballup against the side of the house, waiting for the more civilized members of the party to get up.

There are two ways to travel, first class or with children.

Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one

I once heard a woman laugh at that most tragic moment in all drama, the off-stage shot in "The Wild Duck," and I afterward had her killed, so there will be no more of that out of her.

The discovery of phobias by psychiatrists has done much to clear the atmosphere. Whereas in the old days a person would say: 'Let's get the heck out of here!' today she says: 'Let's get the heck out of here! I've got claustrophobia.

All that a spectator gets out of the game is fresh air, the comical articles in his program, the sight of twenty-two young men rushing about in mysterious formations, and whatever he brought in his flask.

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.

It is one of the most discouraging experiences I have ever had, not forgetting the time when I winked at the Queen Mother in London once.

Breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men.

The Ultimate Day really begins the night before, when you sit up until one o'clock trying to get things into trunk and bags. This is when you discover the well-known fact that summer air swells articles to twice or three times their original size.

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

I suppose that one of the psychological principles of advertising is to so hammer the name of your product into the mind of the timid buyer that when he is confronted with a brusk demand for an order he can't think of anything else to say, whether he wants it or not.

I never liked bananas much anyway. Two-thirds of the way down even one banana I am willing to concede defeat smilingly and give the rest to the nearest monkey.

The ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty.

What is to be done with people who can't read a Sunday paper without messing it all up?... Show me a Sunday paper which has been left in a condition fit only for kite flying, and I will show you an antisocial and dangerous character who has left it that way.

If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.

A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stairs.

Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.

Birds which are the same color as the foliage in which they nest are less likely to be disturbed by other birds who want to drop in and chat, and therefore last longer.

Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of

Work is a form of nervousness.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something.

We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can't take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major's uniform on.

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.

The pencil sharpener is about as far as I have ever got in operating a complicated piece of machinery with any success.

It must be a source of great chagrin to those in charge to think of so many people being able to stick a stamp on a letter and drop it in a mail box without any trouble or suffering at all. They are probably working on a system this very minute, trying to devise some way in which the public can be made to fill out a blank, stand in line, consult some underling who will refer him to a superior, and then be made to black up with burned cork before they can mail a letter.