Robert Benchley
Robert Benchley
Robert Charles Benchleywas an American humorist best known for his work as a newspaper columnist and film actor. From his beginnings at the Harvard Lampoon while attending Harvard University, through his many years writing essays and articles for Vanity Fair and The New Yorker and his acclaimed short films, Benchley's style of humor brought him respect and success during his life, from New York City and his peers at the Algonquin Round Table to contemporaries in the burgeoning film industry...
NationalityAmerican
ProfessionJournalist
Date of Birth15 September 1889
CityWorcester, MA
CountryUnited States of America
There are several natural phenomena which I shall have to have explained to me before I can keep on going as a resident member ofthe human race. One is the metamorphosis which hats and suits undergo exactly one week after their purchase, whereby they are changed from smart, intensely becoming articles of apparel into something children use when they want to "dress up like daddy.
The most common of all antagonisms arises from a man's taking a seat beside you on the train, a seat to which he is completely entitled.
It is rather to be chosen than great riches, unless I have omitted something from the quotation.
A freelance is one who gets paid by the word -- per piece or perhaps.
The Ultimate Day really begins the night before, when you sit up until one o'clock trying to get things into trunk and bags. This is when you discover the well-known fact that summer air swells articles to twice or three times their original size.
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.
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.
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.
If only those old walls could talk...how boring they would be.
All laughter is a muscular rigidity spasmodically relieved by involuntary twitching.
When we think back to our forefathers, with their sedentary lives of forest-chopping, railroad-building, fortune-founding, their fox-hunting and Indian taming, their prancing about in the mazurka and the polka, with their coattails flying and their bustles bouncing, to say nothing of their all-day sessions with the port and straight bourbon,... we must realize that we are a nation, not of neurasthenics, but of sissies and slow-motion sports.
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.
There is no such place as Budapest. Perhaps you are thinking of Bucharest, and there is no such place as Bucharest, either.
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.