Best 132 quotes of Robert Benchley on MyQuotes

A boy can learn a lot from a dog: obedience, loyalty, and the importance of turning around three times before lying down.

A child of three cannot raise its chubby fist to its mouth to remove a piece of carpet which it is through eating, without being made the subject of a psychological seminar of child-welfare experts, and written up, along with five hundred other children of three who have put their hands to their mouths for the same reason.

A freelance is one who gets paid by the word -- per piece or perhaps.

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

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.

All that a spectator gets out of the game is fresh air, the comical articles in his program, the sight of twenty-two young men rushing about in mysterious formations, and whatever he brought in his flask.

A man gets on a train with his little boy, and gives the conductor only one ticket. 'How old's your kid?' the conductor says, and the father says, 'He's four years old.' 'He looks at least twelve to me,' says the conductor. And the father says, 'Can I help it if he worries?

A man may take care of a furnace for twenty-five years and still forget to duck his head when he starts going down the cellar stairs.

A man of forty today has nothing to worry him but falling hair, inability to button the top button, failing vision, shortness of breath, a tendency of the collar to shut off all breathing, trembling of the kidneys to whatever tune the orchestra is playing, and a general sense of giddiness when the matter of rent is brought up. Forty is Life's Golden Age.

An ardent supporter of the hometown team should go to a game prepared to take offense, no matter what happens.

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.

Anyone will be glad to admit that he knows nothing about beagling, or the Chinese stock market, or ballistics, but there is not a man or woman alive who does not claim to know how to cure hiccoughs.

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

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.

Birds which are the same color as the foliage in which they nest are less likely to be disturbed by other birds who want to drop in and chat, and therefore last longer.

Breaking the ice in the pitcher seems to be a feature of the early lives of all great men.

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.

Central Park is the grandiose symbol of the front yard each child in New York hasn't got.

Charlemagne either died or was born or did something with the Holy Roman Empire in 800.

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.

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.

Defining and analyzing humor is a pastime of humorless people.

Drawing on my fine command of the English language, I said nothing.

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

England and America should scrap cricket and baseball and come up with a new game that they both can play. Like baseball, for example.

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

Every boy should have two things: a dog and a mother who lets him have one

Except for an occasional heart attack I feel as young as I ever did.

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.

For most visitors to Manhattan, both foreign and domestic, New York is the Shrine of the Good Time. "I don't see how you stand it," they often say to the native New Yorker who has been sitting up past his bedtime for a week in an attempt to tire his guest out. "It's all right for a week or so, but give me the little old home town when it comes to living." And, under his breath, the New Yorker endorses the transfer and wonders himself how he stands it.

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.

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!

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.

I am pretty sure that, if you will be quite honest, you will admit that a good rousing sneeze, one that tears open your collar and throws your hair into your eyes, is really one of life's sensational pleasures.

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.

I can remember the day when all that a professor was supposed to do was to mark "C minus" on students' examination papers, then gohome to tea. Nowadays they seem to feel that they must know just how much we (outside the university) eat, what we do with our spare time, and how we like our eggs.

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.

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

I don't trust a bank that would lend money to such a poor risk.

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.

If Mr. Einstein doesn't like the natural laws of the universe, let him go back to where he came from.

If only those old walls could talk...how boring they would be.

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

If you are one of the hewers of wood and drawers of small weekly paychecks, your letters will have to contain some few items of news or they will be accounted dry stuff.... But if you happen to be of a literary turn of mind, or are, in any way, likely to become famous, you may settle down to an afternoon of letter-writing on nothing more sprightly in the way of news than the shifting of the wind from south to south-east.

If you look at eggs, you will see that each one is almost round but not quite ... Nature's way of distinguishing eggs from large golf balls.

If you think that you have caught a cold, call in a good doctor. Call in three good doctors and play bridge.

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 haven't been abroad in so long that I almost speak English without an accent now.

I have often wondered how they manage to get return envelopes which miss, by one-quarter of an inch, fitting the blank you are supposed to return. They say, "Please fill out and return the enclosed envelope," and the enclosed envelope is always one-quarter of an inch too small.