Robert Benchley Quotes

“A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.”

— Robert Benchley

“I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.”

— Robert Benchley

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

— Robert Benchley

“Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got.”

— Robert Benchley

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

— Robert Benchley

“People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but-" are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

“As the storm came nearer I began to realize that I hadn't made the most of my three years' immunity. In fact, I hadn't done a single thing about cleaning up my life. I was, if anything, an even more logical target for lightning than the last time I was in range. And thunderstorms don't creep up on you at seven o'clock in the morning in a non-thunderstorm country for nothing, you know. I lined up a rather panicky schedule of reforms ...
But as the storm suddenly petered out and went off in the other direction nothing much has come out of it yet. I may have three years more, and these things can't be rushed.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

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

— Robert Benchley

“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

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

— 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.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

“An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

“Consider the number of young people all over the world who are getting married, day in and day out, for no other reason than thatsomeone of the opposite sex looks well in a green jersey or sings baritone, and then tell me that divorce has reached menacing proportions. The surface of divorce has not even been scratched yet.”

— Robert Benchley

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

“Who said time machines haven't been built yet? They already exist. They're called books”

— Robert Benchley

Next to a shot of some good, habit-forming narcotic, there is nothing like travelling alone as a 'builder-upper.

— Robert Benchley

“You want to go easy on the suicide stuff - first thing you know, you'll ruin your health.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

“But ice-crunching and loud gum-chewing, together with drumming on tables, and whistling the same tune 70 times in succession, because they indicate an indifference on the part of the perpetrator to the rest of the world in general, are not only registered on the delicate surfaces of the brain but eat little holes in it until it finally collapses or blows up.”

— Robert Benchley

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.

— Robert Benchley

“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.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

“If Shakespeare were alive today and writing comedy for the movies, he would be the head-liner for the Mack Sennett studios.”

— Robert Benchley

“This congestion in the post offices is due to what are technically known as "regulations" but what are really a series of acrostics and anagrams devised by some officials who got around a table one night and tried to be funny.”

— Robert Benchley

“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.”

— Robert Benchley

“There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.”

— Robert Benchley

“It was one of those plays in which all of the actors unfortunately enunciated very clearly.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

She sleeps alone at last.

— Robert Benchley

“The wise man thinks once before he speaks twice.”

— Robert Benchley

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

— Robert Benchley

“There is probably no more obnoxious class of citizen, taken end for end, than the returning vacationist.”

— Robert Benchley

“Breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men.”

— Robert Benchley

“I can get dressed earlier in the evening with every intention of going to a dance at midnight, but somehow after the theatre the thing to do seems to be either to go to bed or sit around somewhere. It doesn't seem possible that somewhere people can be expecting you at an hour like that.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

A freelance is one who gets paid by the word
per piece or perhaps.

— Robert Benchley

“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

“But compared with the task of selecting a piece of French pastry held by an impatient waiter a move in chess is like reaching for a salary check in its demand on the contemplative faculties.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

“Streets full of water. Please Advise.”

— Robert Benchley

“Who has not wished that his host would come out frankly at the beginning of the visit and state, in no uncertain terms, the rulesand preferences of the household in such matters as the breakfast hour? And who has not sounded out his guest to find out what he likes in the regulation of his diet and modus vivendi (mode of living)?”

— Robert Benchley

“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

“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.”

— Robert Benchley

“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

It is one of the most discouraging experiences I have ever had, not forgetting the time when I winked at the Queen Mother in London once.

— Robert Benchley

“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