QuoteProject
Things have dropped from me. I have outlived certain desires; I have lost friends, some by death... others through sheer inability to cross the street.
James Thurber
ShareWTF𝕏

Interpretation

What this quote means

This quote reflects on the passage of time and the inevitable changes in relationships and desires.

James Thurber's quote captures the essence of life's transient nature. It emphasizes that as we age, we naturally shed certain desires and connections, either through the loss of friends to death or the gradual distancing that occurs in relationships. This speaks to the universal experience of change and acceptance that comes with living, highlighting how our priorities and social circles evolve.

Themes

ChangeLossFriendshipDesireAging

In practice

Example use cases

During a reflective moment in a speech at a memorial service.

More from James Thurber

If I have any beliefs about immortality, it is that certain dogs I have known will go to heaven, and very, very few persons.
James ThurberRead
Speed is scarcely the noblest virtue of graphic composition, but it has its curious rewards. There is a sense of getting somewhere fast, which satisfies a native American urge.
James ThurberRead
The laughter of man is more terrible than his tears, and takes more forms hollow, heartless, mirthless, maniacal.
James ThurberRead
The appreciative smile, the chuckle, the soundless mirth, so important to the success of comedy, cannot be understood unless one sits among the audience and feels the warmth created by the quality of laughter that the audience takes home with it.
James ThurberRead
Unless artists can remember what it was to be a little boy, they are only half complete as artist and as man.
James ThurberRead
These are the days of bootleg love.
James ThurberRead

Similar quotes

Life is sometimes novel-shaped, mocking the efforts of those authors who, in an effort to make their novels life-shaped, spurn the easy symmetry and cheap resonance of reality.
Stephen FryRead
I hope no one who reads this book has been quite as miserable as Susan and Lucy were that night; but if you have been - if you've been up all night and cried till you have no more tears left in you - you will know that there comes in the end a sort of quietness. You feel as if nothing is ever going to happen again.
C. S. LewisRead
Life has a practice of living you, if you don't live it.
Philip LarkinRead
He named me. He liked the sound of it. And I said, well, all right. I felt a little odd about it. I don't understand all that name changing business anyway... No, he felt that Lauren Bacall was better sounding than Betty Bacall. He had a vision of his own. He was a svengali. He wanted to mold me. He wanted to control me. And he did until Mr. Bogart got involved.
Lauren BacallRead
Now they came back to him, on this night he was seventeen years old. All the years and places of his brief broken life came within mind's reach and made a whole again. He knew once more, at last, after this long, bitter, waisted time, who he was and where he was. But where he must go in the years to come, that he could not see; and he feared to see it.
Ursula K. Le GuinRead
A terrible depression yesterday. Visions of my life petering out into a kind of soft-brained stupor from lack of use.
Sylvia PlathRead

A little wisdom, now and then

Subscribe for the occasional hand-picked quote. No noise.