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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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George Jean Nathan
Age: 76 †
Born: 1882
Born: February 14
Died: 1958
Died: April 8
Critic
Film Critic
Journalist
Writer
Fort Wayne
Indiana
Simply
Dogs
Stars
Flowers
Heaven
Dog
Transmutes
Human
Spring
Alchemist
Humans
Moon
Regarding
Nothing
Flower
Heavens
Real
Beings
Cynicism
Love
Poet
Optimism

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Marriage is based on the theory that when a man discovers a brand of beer exactly to his taste, he should at once throw up his job and go to work inthe brewery.
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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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No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
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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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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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Men go to the theatre to forget women, to remember.
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A man's wife is his compromise with the illusion of his first sweetheart.
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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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The sweetest memory is that which involves something which one should not have done the bitterest, that which involves something which one should not have done, and which one did not do.
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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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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.
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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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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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A man may be said to love most truly that woman in whose company he can feel drowsy in comfort.
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Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.
George Jean Nathan
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Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.
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So long as there is one pretty girl left on the stage, the professional undertakers may hold up their burial of the theater.
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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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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