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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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George Jean Nathan
Age: 76 †
Born: 1882
Born: February 14
Died: 1958
Died: April 8
Critic
Film Critic
Journalist
Writer
Fort Wayne
Indiana
Russian
Graves
Flowers
Theatre
Flower
Walking
American
Dramatist
Doe
Cemetery

More quotes by 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.
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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.
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The most loyal and faithful woman indulges her imagination in a hypothetical liaison whenever she dons a new street frock for the first time.
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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.
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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.
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It is the mark of a superior person that, left to themselves they are able endlessly to amuse, interest and entertain themselves out of their personal stock of meditations, ideas, criticisms, memories, philosophy, humor and what not.
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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.
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An abstainer is the sort of man you wouldn't want to drink with even if he did.
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I drink so the others become interesting.
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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.
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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.
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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.
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Art is the sex of the imagination.
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An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.
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All that is necessary to raise imbecility into what the mob regards as profundity is to lift it off the floor and put it on a platform.
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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.
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A ready way to lose your friend is to lend him money. Another equally ready way to lose him is to refuse to lend him money. It is six of one and a half dozen of the other.
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It is only the cynicism that is born of success that is penetrating and valid.
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I have yet to find a man worth his salt in any direction who did not think of himself first and foremost.
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Men go to the theatre to forget women, to remember.
George Jean Nathan