Robert Benchley

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.

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.

If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.

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 be doing at that moment.

The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

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

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.