Robert Benchley
Full Name: Robert Charles Benchley
Birthdate: September 15, 1889
Birthplace: Worcester, Massachusetts, USA
Date of Death: November 21, 1945
Occupation: Actor, Author, Columnist, Humorist, and Screenwriter
Profile: Best known for his contributions to
The New Yorker.
Website: http://www.robertbenchley.org/
Number of Quotes: 91
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.
A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.
After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.
Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.
An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.
Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.
Anyone who tries to keep track of what is happening in China is going to end up by wearing all the skin of his left ear from twirling around on it.
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.
Babies don't need a vacation, but I still see them at the beach... it pisses me off! I'll go over
to a little baby and say What are you doing here? You haven't worked a day in your life!
Bees are not as busy as we think they are. They just can't buzz any slower.
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.
Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Did you ever get the feeling that you wanted to go, but still had the feeling that you wanted to stay?
Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.
Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.
Evening is the time when the tired brain relaxes in its bath of alcohol and allows
the most fantastic and ridiculous of schemes to float peacefully to the surface.
For a nation which has an almost evil reputation for bustle, bustle, bustle, and rush, rush, rush,
we spend an enormous amount of time standing around in line in front of windows, just waiting.
For a while, I thought I was going around the bend. Then I decided that going around the bend was the best way to go; it beats going straight.
Getting out of bed in the morning is an act of false confidence.
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.
Have you ever noticed when your train of thought jumps the track, leaving your mind completely blank, how it always seems to be a freight train?
Homosexuality is perfectly natural. After all, how can it be unnatural? It exists in nature.
How can anyone be a Communist and still have fun?
Humour is the only solvent of terror and tension.
I can't quite understand why a man should be expected to die for his country but not to drink for it.
I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
I don't believe in the after-life, although I am bringing a change of underwear.
I don't feel old. I don't feel anything until noon. Then it's time for my nap.
I have a simple philosophy: Fill what's empty. Empty what's full. Scratch where it itches.
I have been told by hospital authorities that more copies of my works are left behind by departing patients than those of any other author.
I have been trying for some time to develop a lifestyle that doesn't require my presence.
I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.
I know a man who gave up smoking, drinking, sex, and rich food. He was healthy right up to the day he killed himself.
I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.
I might repeat to myself, slowly and soothingly, a list of quotations beautiful from minds profound; if I can remember any of the damn things.
I must get out of these wet clothes and into a dry martini.
I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
I never sleep through a performance. I always make sure that I am awake for the intermission.
I never work out. If God had
wanted me to bend over, he would have put diamonds on the floor.
I say Darling, do you think you could marry me?
She didn't even look up. She said, Why, do you need the money?
I think that I shall never see
A billboard lovely as a tree.
Indeed, unless the billboards fall
I'll never see a tree at all.
I want to be alone. But I don't want to be left alone.
If a man watches three football games in a row, he should be declared legally dead.
If Mr. Einstein doesn't
like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.
If there is anything I can't stand it's people who are not serious about meals. It is so shallow.
In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop.
In America there are two classes of travel – first class, and with children.
In New York, everyone must have two occupations: one to make a living, and one to make life worth living.
It is one of the great mysteries of nature that a woman, however illogical, is probably unable to do anything illogically.
It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
Laugh and the world laughs with you. Cry, and you have to blow your nose.
Lead me not into temptation; I can find the way myself.
Let's face it, the world is run by C+ students.
Man has two great spiritual needs. One is for forgiveness. The other is for glory.
Many of us spend half our time wishing for things we could have if we didn't spend half our time wishing.
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.
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.
Nothing makes a man feel older than to hear a band coming up the street and not to have the impulse to rush downstairs and out on to the sidewalk.
Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.
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.
Perhaps the best proof that there is no devil is that I have worked for him for years and he has never once even recognized my service.
Probably the only place where a man can feel really secure is in a maximum security prison, except for the imminent threat of release.
Pure truth cannot be assimilated by the crowd; it must be communicated in a simpler form.
See that man over there? He's about to have a heart attack. He's reading a book called How to Relax.
Someday, we're going to look back on all this and... plow into a parked car.
Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
The best way to get a thing done is to begin.
The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.
The difference between a Demarcation Dispute and an International War is about the same as the difference between a burglar and a bank-robber.
The Treasurer's Report
The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
The only cure for a real hangover is death.
The only way I can distinguish proper from improper behavior is to consider what I would do under the circumstances.
The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
There are two kinds of people in the world, those who believe there are two kinds of people in the world and those who don't.
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.
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.
Similar sentiment, different phrasing.
There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.
They say the first baby can come at any time. All the others take nine months.
This is the big city, and I am here to watch.
To me, a good doctor is one who amuses me while he's pouring the poison down.
We all know that a man can't be too careful in the choice of his enemies.
We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.
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.
What makes it so hard to read for some of us is that the writer didn't want to write it in the first place.
When a man tells you that he got rich through hard work, ask him: Whose?
Why does a slight tax increase cost you two hundred dollars and a substantial tax cut save you thirty cents?
Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?
Work is the greatest thing in the world, so we should always save some of it for tomorrow.
You can always tell luck from ability by its duration.
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.
Last on Earth
