George Jean Nathan

“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.”

“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.”

“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.”

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

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

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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

“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.”

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

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

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

“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.”

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

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