Robert Benchley Quotes - Page 4

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.

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

The way to go to the circus, however, is with someone who has seen perhaps one theatrical performance before in his life and that in the High School hall... The scales of sophistication are struck from your eyes and you see in the circus a gathering of men and women who are able to do things as a matter of course which you couldn't do if your life depended on it.

A real hangover is nothing to try out family remedies on. The only cure for a real hangover is death.

Streets full of water. Please Advise.

She sleeps alone at last.

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

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.

Nine-tenths of the value of a sense of humor in writing is not in the things it makes one write but in the things it keeps one from writing. It is especially valuable in this respect in serious writing, and no one without a sense of humor should ever write seriously. For without knowing what is funny, one is constantly in danger of being funny without knowing it.

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.

If there is a streak of ham anywhere in an actor, Shakespeare will bring it out.

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.

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.

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

A child of three cannot raise its chubby fist to its mouth to remove a piece of carpet which it is through eating, without being made the subject of a psychological seminar of child-welfare experts, and written up, along with five hundred other children of three who have put their hands to their mouths for the same reason.

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"?

There are several ways to apportion the family income, all of them unsatisfactory.

If only those old walls could talk...how boring they would be.

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.

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 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.

It is rather to be chosen than great riches, unless I have omitted something from the quotation.

One cubic foot less of space and it would have constituted adultery.

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

Work is a form of nervousness.