Robert Benchley Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800.

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

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
What is the disease which manifests itself in an inability to leave a party--any party at all--until it is all over and the lightsare being put out?... I suppose that part of this mania for staying is due to a fear that, if I go, something good will happen and I'll miss it. Somebody might do card tricks, or shoot somebody else.

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

Robert Benchley
All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.

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
Next to an old-fashioned church social, or possibly a monster bridge party, there is no buzz which can equal the sibilant buzz of a matinée.

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
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
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
But a dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down--very important traits in times like these. In fact, just as soon as a dog comes along who, in addition to these qualities, also knows when to buy and sell stocks, he can be moved right up to the boy's bedroom and the boy can sleep in the dog house.

Robert Benchley
The protons are positive and the electrons are negative, and, of the two, I am sure that the electrons are nicer.

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

Robert Benchley
It has always seemed to me that the most difficult part of building a bridge would be the start.

Robert Benchley
I never knew anyone yet who got up at six who did anything more useful between that time and breakfast than banging a tennis ballup against the side of the house, waiting for the more civilized members of the party to get up.

Robert Benchley
There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.

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
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
I feel as young as I ever did, apart from the occasional heart attack.

Robert Benchley
Let's get out of these wet clothes and into a dry Martini.

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

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

Robert Benchley
He [Benchley] came out of a night club one evening and, tapping a uniformed figure on the shoulder, said, 'Get me a cab.' The uniformed figure turned around furiously and informed him that he was not a doorman but a rear admiral. 'O.K.,' said Benchley, 'Get me a battleship.'

Robert Benchley
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