George Jean Nathan Quotes

43 Sourced Quotes

Patriotism, as I see it, is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.

George Jean Nathan
A life spent in constant labor is a life wasted, save a man be such a fool as to regard a fulsome obituary notice as ample reward.

George Jean Nathan
Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.

George Jean Nathan
To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.

George Jean Nathan
A man admires a woman not for what she says, but what she listens to.

George Jean Nathan
Athletic sports, save in the case of young boys, are designed for idiots.

George Jean Nathan
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
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 Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist... Does not see the graves under the flowers.

George Jean Nathan
An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.

George Jean Nathan
No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

George Jean Nathan
I care not who writes the laws of a country so long as I may listen to its songs.

George Jean Nathan
All criticism, after all, is a criticism of the critic himself before it is one of the criticized.

George Jean Nathan
A man reserves his true and deepest love not for the species of woman in whose company he finds himself electrified and enkindled, but for that one in whose company he may feel tenderly drowsy.

George Jean Nathan
A poet, any real poet, is simply an alchemist who transmutes his cynicism regarding human beings into an optimism regarding the moon, the stars, the heavens, and the flowers, to say nothing of Spring, love, and dogs.

George Jean Nathan
In the theatre, a hero is one who believes that all women are ladies, a villain one who believes that all ladies are women.

George Jean Nathan
There is something distinguished about even his failures; they sink not trivially, but with a certain air of majesty, like a great ship, its flags flying, full of holes.

George Jean Nathan
A ham is simply any actor who has not been successful in repressing his natural instincts.

George Jean Nathan
The dramatic critic who is without prejudice is on the plane with the general who does not believe in taking human life.

George Jean Nathan
A broken heart is a monument to a love that will never die; fulfillment is a monument to a love that is already on its deathbed.

George Jean Nathan
A ready way to lose your friend is to lend him money. Another equally ready way to lose him is to refuse to lend him money. It is six of one and a half dozen of the other.

George Jean Nathan
All one has to do to gather a large crowd in New York is to stand on the curb a few minutes and gaze intently at the sky.

George Jean Nathan
The sweetest memory is that which involves something which one should not have done; the bitterest, that which involves something which one should not have done, and which one did not do.

George Jean Nathan
Great drama is the souvenir of the adventure of a master among the pieces of his own soul.

George Jean Nathan
The most loyal and faithful woman indulges her imagination in a hypothetical liaison whenever she dons a new street frock for the first time.

George Jean Nathan
It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.

George Jean Nathan
Whenever a man encounters a woman in a mood he doesn't understand, he wants to know if she's tired.

George Jean Nathan
It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.

George Jean Nathan
Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.

George Jean Nathan
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