George Jean Nathan
24 quotes
Biography
George Jean Nathan was an American drama critic and magazine editor. He worked closely as an editor with H.
"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."
"Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few."
"The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism."
"Opera in English is, in the main, just about as sensible a plea as baseball in Italian."
"The great problems of the world - social, political, economic and theological - do not concern me in the slightest...If all the Armenians were to be killed tomorrow and if half of Russia were to starve to death the day after, it would not matter to me in the least. What concerns me alone is myself and the interests of a few close friends."
"One does not go to the theater to see life and nature; one goes to see the particular way in which life and nature happen to look to a cultivated, imaginative and entertaining man who happens, in turn, to be a playwright."
"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."
"To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination."
"Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value."
"Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry."
"Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote."
"To speak of morals in art is to speak of legislature in sex. Art is the sex of the imagination."
"Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry."
"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."
"Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles."
"Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry."
"It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid."
"Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man."
"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 the spring, love, and dogs."
"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."
"An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out."
"Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man"
"Opening night is the night before the play is ready to open."
"Politics is the diversion of trivial men who when they succeed at it become important in the eyes of more trivial men."