Quotes By George Jean Nathan

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

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

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

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.

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

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.

I drink to make other people interesting.

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

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

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

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

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

Love demands infinitely less than friendship.

What passes for woman's intuition is often nothing more than man's transparency.

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

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

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.

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.

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

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

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.

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

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

Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry.

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

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

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

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

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.