Quotes by Robert Benchley

• Tell us your phobias and we will tell you what you are afraid of.
• In a house where there are small children the bathroom soon takes on the appearance of the Old Curiosity Shop.
• In America there are two classes of travel - first class, and with children.
• It took me fifteen years to discover I had no talent for writing, but I couldn't give it up because by that time I was too famous.
• Most of the arguments to which I am party fall somewhat short of being impressive, owing to the fact that neither I nor my opponent knows what we are talking about.
• 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.
• 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.
• The biggest obstacle to professional writing is the necessity for changing a typewriter ribbon.
• The freelance writer is a man who is paid per piece or per word or perhaps.
• The surest way to make a monkey of a man is to quote him.
• 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.
• There seems to be no lengths to which humorless people will not go to analyze humor. It seems to worry them.
• We are constantly being surprised that people did things well before we were born.
• We call ourselves a free nation, and yet we let ourselves be told what cabs we can and can't take by a man at a hotel door, simply because he has a drum major's uniform on.
• 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.
• Drinking makes such fools of people, and people are such fools to begin with that it's compounding a felony.
• Why don't you get out of that wet coat and into a dry martini?
• An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.
• A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.
• A dog teaches a boy fidelity, perseverance, and to turn around three times before lying down.
• 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.
• 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.
• 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.
• Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn't the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.
• 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.
• 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.
• I have tried to know absolutely nothing about a great many things, and I have succeeded fairly well.
• 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.
• I do most of my work sitting down; that's where I shine.
• 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.
• Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.
• 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.
• Behind every argument is someone's ignorance.