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

George Jean Nathan

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George Jean Nathan
Age: 76 †
Born: 1882
Born: February 14
Died: 1958
Died: April 8
Critic
Film Critic
Journalist
Writer
Fort Wayne
Indiana
Speak
Artist
Art
Legislature
Morals
Sex
Imagination
Moral

More quotes by George Jean Nathan

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Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry.
George Jean Nathan
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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 Spring, love, and dogs.
George Jean Nathan
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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
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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.
George Jean Nathan
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Like everybody else, when I don't know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds.
George Jean Nathan
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No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
George Jean Nathan
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The Russian dramatist is one who, walking through a cemetery, does not see the flowers on the graves. The American dramatist . . . Does not see the graves under the flowers.
George Jean Nathan
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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.
George Jean Nathan
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It may be said that artist and censor differ in this wise: that the first is a decent mind in an indecent body and that the second is an indecent mind in a decent body.
George Jean Nathan
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The notion that as a man grows older his illusions leave him is not quite true. What is true is that his early illusions are supplanted by new, and to him, equally convincing illusions.
George Jean Nathan
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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.
George Jean Nathan
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It is also said of me that I now and then contradict myself. Yes, I improve wonderfully as time goes on.
George Jean Nathan
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Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.
George Jean Nathan
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It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.
George Jean Nathan
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Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.
George Jean Nathan
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The bachelors admired freedom is often a yoke, for the freer a man is to himself the greater slave he often is to the whims of others.
George Jean Nathan
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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.
George Jean Nathan
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I drink to make other people interesting.
George Jean Nathan
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An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.
George Jean Nathan
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A man's wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart.
George Jean Nathan