Top 100 Robert Benchley Quotes
#1. 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.
Robert Benchley
#2. 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.
Robert Benchley
#3. Sheer madness is, of course, the highest possible brow in humor.
Robert Benchley
#4. New York - The city where the people from Oshkosh look at the people from Dubuque in the next theater seats and say These New Yorkers don't dress any better than we do.
Robert Benchley
#5. 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.
Robert Benchley
#6. We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.
Robert Benchley
#7. England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example.
Robert Benchley
#10. 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.
Robert Benchley
#11. I haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an accent now.
Robert Benchley
#12. Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got.
Robert Benchley
#13. 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.
Robert Benchley
#14. 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?
Robert Benchley
#15. 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.
Robert Benchley
#16. The free-lance writer is one who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
Robert Benchley
#17. 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.
Robert Benchley
#18. 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.
Robert Benchley
#19. This is a test. It is only a test. Had it been an actual job, you would have received raises, promotions, and other signs of appreciation.
Robert Benchley
#20. Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
Robert Benchley
#21. People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but - " are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong.
Robert Benchley
#22. 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.
Robert Benchley
#23. Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800.
Robert Benchley
#25. 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.
Robert Benchley
#26. You want to go easy on the suicide stuff - first thing you know, you'll ruin your health.
Robert Benchley
#27. 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.
Robert Benchley
#28. 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.
Robert Benchley
#29. The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.
Robert Benchley
#30. If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls.
Robert Benchley
#31. There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.
Robert Benchley
#33. I don't trust a bank that would lend money to such a poor risk.
Robert Benchley
#34. Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.
Robert Benchley
#35. Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one
Robert Benchley
#36. The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
Robert Benchley
#37. 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.
Robert Benchley
#38. 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.
Robert Benchley
#39. It is rather to be chosen than great riches, unless I have omitted something from the quotation.
Robert Benchley
#40. There are several ways to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory.
Robert Benchley
#41. 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.
Robert Benchley
#42. I can't bring myself to say, 'Well, I guess I'll be toddling along.' It isn't that I can't toddle. It's just that I can't guess I'll toddle.
Robert Benchley
#43. Even nowadays a man can't step up and kill a woman without feeling just a bit unchivalrous.
Robert Benchley
#44. Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper.
Robert Benchley
#45. Most personal correspondence of today consists of letters the first half of which are given over to an indexed statement of why the writer hasn't written before, followed by one paragraph of small talk, with the remainder devoted to reasons why it is imperative that the letter be brought to a close.
Robert Benchley
#46. If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios.
Robert Benchley
#47. 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.
Robert Benchley
#48. Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?
Robert Benchley
#49. The ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty.
Robert Benchley
#50. 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.
Robert Benchley
#51. Infants need the most sleep, and, what is more, get it. Stunning them with a soft, padded hammer is the best way to insure their getting it at the right times.
Robert Benchley
#52. In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop.
Robert Benchley
#54. The knocking out of a pipe can be made almost as important as the smoking of it, especially if there are nervous people in the room. A good, smart knock of a pipe against a tin wastebasket and you will have a neurasthenic out of his chair and into the window sash in no time.
Robert Benchley
#55. If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.
Robert Benchley
#57. One cubic foot less of space and it would have constituted adultery.
Robert Benchley
#58. 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.
Robert Benchley
#59. It has always seemed to me that the most difficult part of building a bridge would be the start.
Robert Benchley
#60. If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out.
Robert Benchley
#61. There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.
Robert Benchley
#62. In Milwaukee last month a man died laughing over one of his own jokes. That's what makes it so tough for us outsiders. We have to fight home competition.
Robert Benchley
#63. A freelance is one who gets paid by the word
per piece or perhaps.
Robert Benchley
#64. All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.
Robert Benchley
#65. Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.
Robert Benchley
#66. I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.
Robert Benchley
#67. 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.
Robert Benchley
#68. There is no doubt that every healthy, normal boy ... should own a dog at some time in his life, preferably between the ages of forty-five and fifty.
Robert Benchley
#69. The problem of what to wear while lolling about the house on a Sunday afternoon is becoming more and more acute as the fashions in lolling garments change. The American home is in danger of taking on the appearance of an Oriental bordello.
Robert Benchley
#70. 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.
Robert Benchley
#71. 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!
Robert Benchley
#72. You won't find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains.
Robert Benchley
#74. One of the easiest forms of pretense to break down is the pretense of enthusiasm for exotic foods. Just bring on the exotic foods.
Robert Benchley
#75. One of the great natural phenomena is the way in which a tube of toothpaste suddenly empties itself when it hears that you are planning a trip, so that when you come to pack it is just a twisted shell of its former self, with not even a cubic millimeter left to be squeezed out.
Robert Benchley
#76. [Reviewing the New York City Telephone Directory] But it is the opinion of the present reviewer that the weakness of plot is due to the great number of characters which clutter up the pages. The Russian school is responsible for this.
Robert Benchley
#77. Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.
Robert Benchley
#78. Opera is where a guy gets stabbed in the back, and instead of dying, he sings.
Robert Benchley
#79. 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.
Robert Benchley
#80. If only those old walls could talk ... how boring they would be.
Robert Benchley
#81. As for me, except for an occasional heart attack, I feel as young as I ever did.
Robert Benchley
#82. A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
Robert Benchley
#83. The art of cursing people seems to have lost its tang since the old days when a good malediction took four deep breaths to deliverand sent the outfielders scurrying toward the fence to field.
Robert Benchley
#84. 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.
Robert Benchley
#85. 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.
Robert Benchley
#86. Breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men.
Robert Benchley
#87. There are two kinds of travel: first class and with children.
Robert Benchley
#88. Anyone can do any amount of work provided it isn't the work he is supposed to be doing at the moment.
Robert Benchley
#89. 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.
Robert Benchley
#90. I know I'm drinking myself to a slow death, but then I'm in no hurry.
Robert Benchley
#91. 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.
Robert Benchley
#92. 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.
Robert Benchley
#93. The Great Arizona Desert is full of the bleaching bones of people who waited for me to start something.
Robert Benchley
#94. I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
Robert Benchley
#95. 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.
Robert Benchley
#96. 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.
Robert Benchley
#97. 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.
Robert Benchley
#98. Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
Robert Benchley
#99. If you think that you have caught a cold, call in a good doctor. Call in three good doctors and play bridge.
Robert Benchley
#100. 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.
Robert Benchley
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