George Jean Nathan Quotes

“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.”

“A ham is simply any actor who has not been successful in repressing his natural instincts.”

“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.”

“A man admires a woman not for what she says, but what she listens to.”

“A man may be said to love most truly that woman in whose company he can feel drowsy in comfort.”

“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.”

“A man's wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart.”

“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.”

“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.”

“All that is necessary to raise imbecility into what the mob regards as profundity is to lift it off the floor and put it on a platform.”

“An abstainer is the sort of man you wouldn't want to drink with even if he did.”

“An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.”

“An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.”

“Art is the sex of imagination.”

“Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.”

“Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry.”

“Common sense, in so far as it exists, is all for the bourgeoisie. Nonsense is the privilege of the aristocracy. The worries of the world are for the common people.”

“Criticism is the windows and chandeliers of art: it illuminates the enveloping darkness in which art might otherwise rest only vaguely discernible, and perhaps altogether unseen.
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“Drama - what literature does at night.”

“Great art is as irrational as great music. It is mad with its own loveliness.”

“I drink to make other people seem more interesting.”

“I have yet to find a man worth his salt in any direction who did not think of himself first and foremost.”

“I know many married men, I even know a few happily married men, but I don't know one who wouldn't fall down the first open coal hole running after the first pretty girl who gave him a wink.”

“Impersonal criticism is like an impersonal fist fight or an impersonal marriage, and as successful.”

“In the theatre, a hero is one who believes that all women are ladies, a villain one who believes that all ladies are women.”

“It is also said of me that I now and then contradict myself. Yes, I improve wonderfully as time goes on.”

“It is the mark of a superior person that, left to themselves they are able endlessly to amuse, interest and entertain themselves out of their personal stock of meditations, ideas, criticisms, memories, philosophy, humor and what not.”

“Like everybody else, when I don't know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds.”

“Love demands infinitely less than friendship.”

“Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.”