My Life and Hard Times is the 1933 autobiography of James Thurber. It is considered his greatest work as he relates in bewildered deadpan prose the eccentric goings on of his family and the town beyond (Columbus, Ohio).
Characters include the maid who lives in constant fear of being hypnotised; a grandfather who believes that the American Civil War is still going on; a mother who fears electricity is leaking all over the house and Muggs, an Airedale Terrier that had a liking for biting people.
The book was a best seller and also achieved high critical praise. Russell Baker writing in the New York Times said it was "possibly the shortest and most elegant autobiography ever". Ogden Nash said it was "just about the best thing I ever read"', and Dorothy Parker said "Mad, I don't say. Genius I grant you."
Famous quotes containing the words hard times, life, hard and/or times:
“They make a great ado nowadays about hard times; but I think that ... this general failure, both private and public, is rather occasion for rejoicing, as reminding us whom we have at the helm,—that justice is always done. If our merchants did not most of them fail, and the banks too, my faith in the old laws of the world would be staggered.”
—Henry David Thoreau (1817–1862)
“I am content to live it all again,
And yet again, if it be life to pitch
Into the frog-spawn of a blind man’s ditch.”
—William Butler Yeats (1865–1939)
“All the strong agonized men
Wear the hard clothes of war,
Try to remember what they are fighting for.
But in dark weeping helpless moments of peace
Women and poets believe and resist forever.”
—Muriel Rukeyser (1913–1980)
“Simply because our times are complex, does it follow that our parenting must also be? Must we reject the common sense that what worked so well in the past just because our times are high-tech? We live in such fear of being called “old-fashioned” that we are cutting ourselves off from that which is proven.”
—Fred G. Gosman (20th century)