Cartoonists From The United States

"Man has gone long enough, or even too long, without being man enough to face the simple truth that the trouble with Man is Man."

"Now I am not a cat man, but a dog man, and all felines can tell this at a glance — a sharp, vindictive glance."

"A pinch of probability is worth a pound of perhaps."

"Boys are perhaps beyond the range of anybody's sure understanding, at least when they are between the ages of eighteen months and ninety years."

"There are two kinds of light — the glow that illumines, and the glare that obscures."

"Precision of communication is important, more important than ever, in our era of hair trigger balances, when a false or misunderstood word may create as much disaster as a sudden thoughtless act."

"Every time is a time for comedy in a world of tension that would languish without it. But I cannot confine myself to lightness in a period of human life that demands light ... We all know that, as the old adage has it, "It is later than you think." ..., but I also say occasionally: "It is lighter than you think." In this light let's not look back in anger, or forward in fear, but around in awareness."

"Who are you?" the minstrel asked. "I am the Golux," said the Golux, proudly, "the only Golux in the world, and not a mere Device."

""To hell with the handkerchief," said Walter Mitty scornfully. He took one last drag on his cigarette and snapped it away. Then, with that faint, fleeting smile playing about his lips, he faced the firing squad; erect and motionless, proud and disdainful, Walter Mitty the Undefeated, inscrutable to the last."

"Well, if I called the wrong number, why did you answer the phone?"

"Early to rise and early to bed makes a male healthy and wealthy and dead."

"It is better to ask some of the questions than to know all the answers."

"A burden in the bush is worth two on your hands."

"There is no safety in numbers, or in anything else."

"It's a naïve domestic Burgundy without any breeding, but I think you'll be amused by its presumption."

"He knows all about art, but he doesn't know what he likes."

"Le coeur a ses raisons, Mrs. Bence, que la raison ne connait pas."

"All right, have it your way — you heard a seal bark!"

"I love the idea of there being two sexes, don't you?"

"You can fool too many of the people too much of the time."

"You might as well fall flat on your face as lean over too far backward."

"amen said a beetle who had preceded him into the interior that is the way i feel myself is it not wonderful when one arrives at the place where he can give up his ambitions and resignedly nay even with gladness recognize that it is a far far better thing to be merged harmoniously in the cosmic all and this confortable situation in his midst so affected the marauding robin that he perched upon a blooming twig and sang until the blossoms shook with ecstacy he sang i have a good digestion and there is a god after all which i was wicked enough to doubt yesterday when it rained"

"there are more things twixt the vermiform appendix and nirvana than are dreamt of in thy philosophy horatio"

"well well boss there is something to be said for the lyric and imperial attitude believe that everything is for you until you discover that you are for it sing your faith in what you get to eat right up to the minute you are eaten for you are going to be eaten"

"how beautiful is the universe when something digestible meets with an eager digestion how sweet the embrace when atom rushes to the arms of waiting atom"

"breakfast breakfast i am full of breakfast and they are at breakfast in heaven they breakfast in heaven all s well with the world"

"demons and fishhooks he exclaimed i am losing my personal identity as a worm my individuality is melting away from me odds craw i am becoming part and parcel of this bloody robin so help me i am thinking like a robin and not like a worm any longer yes yes i even find myself agreeing that a robin must live i still do not understand with my mentality why a robin must live and yet i swoon into a condition of belief"

"a robin said to an angleworm as he ate him i am sorry but a bird has to live somehow the worm being slow witted could not gather his dissent into a wise crack and retort he was effectually swallowed before he could turn a phrase"

"i asked him why is it that you are so greatly favored ask rather said warty bliggens what the universe has done to deserve me"

"a little more conversation revealed that warty bliggens considers himself to be the center of the said universe the earth exists to grow toadstools for him to sit under the sun to give him light by day and the moon and wheeling constellations to make beautiful the night for the sake of warty bliggens"

"i met a toad the other day by the name of warty bliggens he was sitting under a toadstool feeling contented he explained that when the cosmos was created that toadstool was especially planned for his personal shelter from sun and rain thought out and prepared for him"

"there is always a comforting thought in time of trouble when it is not our trouble"

"there is bound to be a certain amount of trouble running any country if you are president the trouble happens to you but if you are a tyrant you can arrange things so that most of the trouble happens to other people"

"it is a cheering thought to think that god is on the side of the best digestion"

"dear boss i relay this information without any fear that humanity will take warning and reform"

"it wont be long now it won't be long till earth is barren as the moon and sapless as a mumbled bone"

"each generation wastes a little more of the future with greed and lust for riches"

"men talk of money and industry of hard times and recoveries of finance and economics but the ants wait and the scorpions wait for while men talk they are making deserts all the time getting the world ready for the conquering ant drought and erosion and desert because men cannot learn"

"what man calls civilization always results in deserts"

"it wont be long now it wont be long man is making deserts of the earth it wont be long now before man will have used it up so that nothing but ants and centipedes and scorpions can find a living on it man has oppressed us for a million years but he goes on steadily cutting the ground from under his own feet making deserts deserts deserts"

"no insect likes human beings and if you think you can see why the only reason i tolerate you is because you seem less human to me than most of them"

"as i was crawling through the holes in a swiss cheese the other day it occurred to me to wonder what a swiss cheese would think if a swiss cheese could think and after cogitating for some time i said to myself if a swiss cheese could think it would think that a swiss cheese was the most important thing in the world just as everything that can think at all does think about itself"

"i have often noticed that ancestors never boast the descendants who boast of ancestors i would rather start a family than one blood will tell but often it tells too much"

"dance mehitabel dance caper and shake a leg what little blood is left will fizz like wine in a keg"

"well boss mehitabel the cat has reappeared in her old haunts with a flock of kittens archy she said to me yesterday the life of a female artist is continually hampered what in hell have i done to deserve all these kittens i look back on my life and it seems to me to be just one damned kitten after another i am a dancer archy and my only prayer is to be allowed to give my best to my art but just as i feel that i am succeeding in my life work along comes another batch of these damned kittens it is not archy that i am shy on mother love god knows i care for the sweet little things curse them but am i never to be allowed to live my own life i have purposely avoided matrimony in the interests of the higher life but i might just as well have been a domestic slave for all the freedom i have gained i hope none of them gets run over by an automobile my heart would bleed if anything happened to them and i found it out but it isn t fair archy it isn t fair these damned tom cats have all the fun and freedom if i was like some of these green eyed feline vamps i know i would simply walk out on the bunch of them and let them shift for themselves but i am not that kind archy i am full of mother love my kindness has always been my curse a tender heart is the cross i bear self sacrifice always and forever is my motto damn them i will make a home for the sweet innocent little things unless of course providence in his wisdom should remove them they are living just now in an abandoned garbage can just behind a made over stable in greenwich village and if it rained into the can before i could get back and rescue them i am afraid the little dears might drown it makes me shudder just to think of it of course if i were a family cat they would probably be drowned anyhow sometimes i think the kinder thing would be for me to carry the sweet little things over to the river and drop them in myself but a mother s love archy is so unreasonable something always prevents me these terrible conflicts are always presenting themselves to the artist the eternal struggle between art and life archy is something fierce yes something fierce my what a dramatic life i have lived one moment up the next moment down again but always gay archy always gay and always the lady too in spite of hell well boss it will be interesting to note just how mehitabel works out her present problem a dark mystery still broods over the manner in which the former family of three kittens disappeared one day she was talking to me of the kittens and the next day when i asked her about them she said innocently what kittens interrogation point and that was all i could ever get out of her on the subject we had a heavy rain right after she spoke to me but probably that garbage can leaks so the kittens have not yet been drowned"

"an optimist is a guy that has never had much experience"

"procrastination is the art of keeping up with yesterday"

"oh i should worry and fret death and i will coquette there s a dance in the old dame yet toujours gai toujours gai"

"the octopus's secret wish is not to be a formal fish he dreams that some time he may grow another set of legs or so and be a broadway music show"

"dedicated to babs with babs knows what and babs knows why"