George Jean Nathan > Quotes

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

“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.”
― 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

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

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

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

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

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

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

“Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.”
― 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 the spring, love, and dogs.”
― George Jean Nathan

“Criticism is the art wherewith a critic tries to guess himself into a share of the artist’s fame.”
― George Jean Nathan, The House of Satan

“I drink to make other people interesting."

or

"I only drink to make other people seem more interesting.”
― George Jean Nathan

“Art is the sex of imagination.”
― George Jean Nathan, Five Great Modern Irish Plays