WIST Quotations

Benchley, Robert -- “How to Get Things Done,” Chicago Tribune (2 Feb 1930)

Dave — Sat, 03 Sep 2011 19:33:21 +0000

The secret of my incredible energy and efficiency in getting work done is a simple one. I have based it very deliberately on a well-known psychological principle and have refined it so that it is now almost too refined. I shall have to begin coarsening it up again pretty soon. The psychological principle is this: anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed to be doing at that moment.

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
“How to Get Things Done,” Chicago Tribune (2 Feb 1930)

Benchley, Robert -- “Stop Those Hiccoughs!”, My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

Dave — Wed, 17 Aug 2011 12:24:48 +0000

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.

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
“Stop Those Hiccoughs!”, My Ten Years in a Quandary and How They Grew (1936)

Benchley, Robert -- (Attributed)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

Anyone can do any amount of work, provided it isn’t the work he is supposed be doing at that moment.

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
(Attributed)

In Robert E. Drennan, The Algonquin Wits (1968)

Benchley, Robert -- (Attributed)

Dave — Sun, 01 Feb 2004 16:00:00 +0000

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 (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
(Attributed)

In Nathaniel Benchley, Robert Benchley, ch. 1 (1955)

Benchley, Robert -- (Attributed)

Dave — Fri, 27 Jun 2008 11:54:55 +0000

So who’s in a hurry?

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
(Attributed)

When asked if he understood drinking was a slow death. In Nathaniel Benchley, Robert Benchley, ch. 1 (1955)

Benchley, Robert -- (Attributed)

Dave — Fri, 19 Apr 2013 12:20:04 +0000

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

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
(Attributed)

Benchley, Robert -- LIFE Magazine (8 Mar 1929)

Dave — Wed, 10 Aug 2011 12:47:09 +0000

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 (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
LIFE Magazine (8 Mar 1929)

Benchley, Robert -- Of All Things, ch. 20 “The Most Popular Book of the Month” (1921)

Dave — Thu, 27 Feb 2025 01:19:35 +0000

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 (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
Of All Things, ch. 20 “The Most Popular Book of the Month” (1921)
(Source)

Benchley, Robert -- Pluck and Luck (1925)

Dave — Wed, 24 Aug 2016 00:19:29 +0000

In America there are two classes of travel — first class, and with children. Traveling with children corresponds roughly to traveling third class in Bulgaria.

Robert Benchley (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
Pluck and Luck (1925)

Benchley, Robert -- Pluck and Luck, “Ask That Man” (1925)

Dave — Wed, 03 Aug 2011 15:11:51 +0000

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 (1889-1945) American humorist, columnist, actor, wit
Pluck and Luck, “Ask That Man” (1925)