George Jean Nathan Quotes

Most popular George Jean Nathan Quotes

Art is the sex of the imagination. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Art is the sex of the imagination.
— George Jean Nathan American Mercury

art imagination

I drink to make other people interesting. - George Jean Nathan quote.
I drink to make other people interesting.
— George Jean Nathan

funny drinking

Love demands infinitely less than friendship. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Love demands infinitely less than friendship.
— George Jean Nathan The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary

friendship love

J. M. Barrie—The triumph of sugar over diabetes. - George Jean Nathan quote.
J. M. Barrie—The triumph of sugar over diabetes.
— George Jean Nathan Comedians All

insulting

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched. - George Jean Nathan quote.
No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
— George Jean Nathan The Smart Set

anger thinking aggression

Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open.
— George Jean Nathan Bottoms Up: An Application of the Slapstick to Satire

theater

Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.
— George Jean Nathan The Autobiography of an Attitude

love

Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.
— George Jean Nathan

voting

In the words of a friend of mine, I drink to make other people interesting. - George Jean Nathan quote.
In the words of a friend of mine, I drink to make other people interesting.
— George Jean Nathan The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary

drinking

Comedy is but tragedy, cunningly disguised and popularized for the multitude. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Comedy is but tragedy, cunningly disguised and popularized for the multitude.
— George Jean Nathan Bottoms Up: An Application of the Slapstick to Satire

Comedy

Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.
— George Jean Nathan The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary

art

It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid. - George Jean Nathan quote.
It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.
— George Jean Nathan Monks are Monks

success cynicism

What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency. - George Jean Nathan quote.
What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency.
— George Jean Nathan

women

An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out. - George Jean Nathan quote.
An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.
— George Jean Nathan in Saturday Review

optimism

I care not who writes the laws of a country so long as I may listen to its songs. - George Jean Nathan quote.
I care not who writes the laws of a country so long as I may listen to its songs.
— George Jean Nathan The World in Falseface

songs

The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth. - George Jean Nathan quote.
The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.
— George Jean Nathan American Mercury

comedians

The optimist is the kind of person who believes a housefly is looking for a way out. - George Jean Nathan quote.
The optimist is the kind of person who believes a housefly is looking for a way out.
— George Jean Nathan

optimism pessimism

Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.
— George Jean Nathan The Theater, the Drama, the Girls

love

Patriotism, as I see it, is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Patriotism, as I see it, is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.
— George Jean Nathan Testament of a Critic

patriotism

Miss Stapleton played the part as though she had not yet signed the contract with the producer. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Miss Stapleton played the part as though she had not yet signed the contract with the producer.
— George Jean Nathan

critics

Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist's fame. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist's fame.
— George Jean Nathan The House of Satan

criticism

Sex—in actual life—touches the heavens only when it simultaneously touches the gutter and the mud. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Sex—in actual life—touches the heavens only when it simultaneously touches the gutter and the mud.
— George Jean Nathan Monks are Monks: A Diagnostic Scherzo

sex

Impersonal criticism is like an impersonal fist fight or an impersonal marriage, and as successful. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Impersonal criticism is like an impersonal fist fight or an impersonal marriage, and as successful.
— George Jean Nathan

critics

What passes for woman's intuition is more often intrinsically nothing more than man's transparency. - George Jean Nathan quote.
What passes for woman's intuition is more often intrinsically nothing more than man's transparency.
— George Jean Nathan The Theater, the Drama, the Girls

intuition

The average American home is no longer a harbor and a heaven, but rather a mere place of debarkation. - George Jean Nathan quote.
The average American home is no longer a harbor and a heaven, but rather a mere place of debarkation.
— George Jean Nathan

home

Marriage defeats and humbles the man since it soon or late robs him of his greatest bulwark, viz., vanity. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Marriage defeats and humbles the man since it soon or late robs him of his greatest bulwark, viz., vanity.
— George Jean Nathan The Theater, the Drama, the Girls

marriage vanity

In my perhaps sometimes unjust critical canon, a dramatist is held always to be as strong as his weakest banality. - George Jean Nathan quote.
In my perhaps sometimes unjust critical canon, a dramatist is held always to be as strong as his weakest banality.
— George Jean Nathan Comedians All

drama

Art is a reaching out into the ugliness of the world for vagrant beauty and the imprisoning of it in a tangible form. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Art is a reaching out into the ugliness of the world for vagrant beauty and the imprisoning of it in a tangible form.
— George Jean Nathan The Critic and the Drama

art

Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
— George Jean Nathan Say Who? A Guide to the Quotations of the Century

politics

Women, as they grow older, rely more and more on cosmetics. Men, as they grow older, rely more and more on a sense of humor. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Women, as they grow older, rely more and more on cosmetics. Men, as they grow older, rely more and more on a sense of humor.
— George Jean Nathan

age men and women

The chief rock upon which a lasting friendship rests is a strong mutual belief in the same general fallacies and falsehoods. - George Jean Nathan quote.
The chief rock upon which a lasting friendship rests is a strong mutual belief in the same general fallacies and falsehoods.
— George Jean Nathan The Theater, the Drama, the Girls

friendship

Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a particular brand of beer exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go to work in the brewery. - George Jean Nathan quote.
Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a particular brand of beer exactly to his taste he should at once throw up his job and go to work in the brewery.
— George Jean Nathan The Theatre, The Drama, The Girls

marriage

The notion that as man grows older his illusions leave him is not quite true.  What is true is that his early illusions are supplanted by new and, to him, equally convincing illusions. - George Jean Nathan quote.
The notion that as man grows older his illusions leave him is not quite true.  What is true is that his early illusions are supplanted by new and, to him, equally convincing illusions.
— George Jean Nathan The Theater, the Drama, the Girls

illusion

My code of life and conduct is simply this: work hard, play to the allowable limit, disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others, never do a friend a dirty trick, eat and drink what you feel like when you feel like, never grow indignant over anything, trust to tobacco for calm and serenity, bathe twice a day...learn to play at least one musical instrument and then play it only in private, never allow one's self even a passing thought of death, never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin, live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities, treat one's enemies with polite inconsideration, avoid persons who are chronically in need, and be satisfied with life always but never with one's self. - George Jean Nathan quote.
My code of life and conduct is simply this: work hard, play to the allowable limit, disregard equally the good and bad opinion of others, never do a friend a dirty trick, eat and drink what you feel like when you feel like, never grow indignant over anything, trust to tobacco for calm and serenity, bathe twice a day...learn to play at least one musical instrument and then play it only in private, never allow one's self even a passing thought of death, never contradict anyone or seek to prove anything to anyone unless one gets paid for it in cold, hard coin, live the moment to the utmost of its possibilities, treat one's enemies with polite inconsideration, avoid persons who are chronically in need, and be satisfied with life always but never with one's self.
— George Jean Nathan The World of George Jean Nathan: Essays, Reviews, & Commentary

personal credos