Robert Benchley Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

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
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
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
One square foot less and it would be adulterous.

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
You won't find one fish in a million that has enough sense to come in when it rains.

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 ofa matinée.

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

Robert Benchley
There may be said to be two classes of people in the world; those who constantly divide the people of the world into two classes, and those who do not.

Robert Benchley
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
The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.

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

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

Robert Benchley
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
Often Daddy sat up very late working on a case of Scotch.

Robert Benchley
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
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
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 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
I once heard of a murderer who propped his two victims up against a chess board in sporting attitudes and was able to get as far as Seattle before his crime was discovered.

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

Robert Benchley