George Jean Nathan Quotes Page 2

“Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.”

“Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste, he should at once throw up his job and go to work in the brewery.”

“Men go to the theatre to forget; women, to remember.”

“Musicals are to the theater what wines are to a substantial dinner.”

“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.”

“Opening Night: The night before the play is ready to open.”

“Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.”

“Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.”

“Sex touches the heavens only when it simultaneously touches the gutter and the mud.”

“Shaw writes plays for the ages, the ages between five and twelve.”

“So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.”

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

“The notion that as a 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.”

“The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.”

“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.”

“The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.”

“The triumph of sugar over diabetes.”

“There is no legimate actor who can resist the powerful lure of the movies. It isn't the money that fetches him. It isn't the great publicity. It is simply this: the movies enable an actor to look at himself.”

“What passes for woman’s intuition is often nothing more than man’s transparency.”

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

“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.”

“Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist’s fame.”

“Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.”

“No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.”

“To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination.”