Robert Benchley Quotes

92 Sourced Quotes

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
I don't want to be an alarmist, but I think that the Younger Generation is up to something.... I base my apprehension on nothing more definite than the fact that they are always coming in and going out of the house, without any apparent reason.

Robert Benchley
We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.

Robert Benchley
Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?

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
A great many people have come up to me and asked me how I manage to get so much work done and still keep looking so dissipated. My answer is "Don't you wish you knew?"

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

Robert Benchley
The English language may hold a more disagreeable combination of words than "The doctor will see you now." I am willing to concede something to the phrase "Have you anything to say before the current is turned on?" That may be worse for the moment, but it doesn't last so long. For continued, unmitigating depression, I know nothing to equal "The doctor will see you now." But I'm not narrow-minded about it. I'm willing to consider other possibilities.

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
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
The ideal age for a boy to own a dog is between forty-five and fifty.

Robert Benchley
I can't quite define my aversion to asking questions of strangers. From snatches of family battles which I have heard drifting up from railway stations and street corners, I gather that there are a great many men who share my dislike for it, as well as an equal number of women who … believe it to be the solution to most of this world's problems.

Robert Benchley
After an author has been dead for some time, it becomes increasingly difficult for his publishers to get a new book out of him each year.

Robert Benchley
Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.

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

Robert Benchley
I am more the inspirational type of speller. I work on hunches rather than mere facts, and the result is sometimes open to criticism by purists.

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

Robert Benchley
In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop.

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

Robert Benchley
The free-lance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.

Robert Benchley
Great literature must spring from an upheaval in the author's soul. If that upheaval is not present then it must come from the works of any other author which happens to be handy and easily adapted.

Robert Benchley
One of the chief duties of the fan is to engage in arguments with the man behind him. This department of the game has been allowed to run down fearfully.

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

Robert Benchley
One square foot less and it would be adulterous.

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

Robert Benchley
It took me fifteen years to discover that I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.

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

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