If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James ThurberRead
Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.
Interpretation
This quote reflects on the passage of time and the inevitable changes in relationships and desires.
James Thurber's quote captures the essence of life's transient nature. It emphasizes that as we age, we naturally shed certain desires and connections, either through the loss of friends to death or the gradual distancing that occurs in relationships. This speaks to the universal experience of change and acceptance that comes with living, highlighting how our priorities and social circles evolve.
In practice
During a reflective moment in a speech at a memorial service.
If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.
The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
These are the days of bootleg love.
To love playthings well as a child, to lead an adventurous and honorable youth, and to settle when the time arrives, into a green and smiling age, is to be a good artis en life and deserve well of yourself and your neighbor.
if it's true your life flashes past your eyes before you die, then it is also the truth that your life rushes forth when you are ready to start to truly be alive.
To fulfill a dream, to be allowed to sweat over lonely labor, to be given a chance to create, is the meat and potatoes of life. The money is the gravy.
Adulthood isn't an award they'll give you for being a good child. You can waste years, trying to get someone to give that respect to you, as though it were a sort of promotion or raise in pay. If only you do enough, if only you are good enough. No. You have to just take it. Give it to yourself, I suppose. Say, I'm sorry you feel like that and walk away. But that's hard
I closed my eyes and tried to sleep. But it was not until much later that I was able to get any real sleep. In a place far away from anyone or anywhere, I drifted off for a moment.
I keep following this sort of hidden river of my life, you know, whatever the topic or impulse which comes, I follow it along trustingly. And I don't have any sense of its coming to a kind of crescendo, or of its petering out either. It is just going steadily along.
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