Progress was all right. Only it went on too long.

Thurber’s line is a dry, epigrammatic complaint about modernity: “progress” is conceded to be beneficial in principle, yet its relentless continuation becomes wearying, destabilizing, or dehumanizing. The humor turns on the reversal of a celebratory cliché—progress is assumed to be an unqualified good—by treating it as something that can be overdone, like a fad that outstays its welcome. Read more broadly, it captures a mid‑20th‑century ambivalence toward technological change and social acceleration: improvements arrive, but they also erode familiar rhythms, traditions, and forms of meaning. The sentence’s clipped cadence reinforces the sense of impatience and fatigue.