Robert Benchley - People Quotes

10 Sourced Quotes

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

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

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

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
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
People who begin sentences with "I may be old-fashioned but--" are usually not only old-fashioned but wrong. I never thought the time would come when I should catch myself leading off with that crack. But I feel it coming on right now.

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
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