George Jean Nathan's Quotes

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

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

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

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.

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.

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.

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

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

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

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

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

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

Love demands infinitely less than friendship.

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.

Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry.

No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.

I drink to make other people interesting.

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

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

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

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

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.

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