George Jean Nathan (1882–1958) was an American drama critic and editor. He worked closely with H.L. Mencken, bringing the literary magazine The Smart Set to prominence as an editor, and co-founding and editing The American Mercury and The American Spectator.
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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
Topics: Mistakes, Failures
Politics is the diversion of trivial men who, when they succeed at it, become important in the eyes of more trivial men.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Politics
Like everybody else, when I don’t know what else to do, I seem to go in for catching colds.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Health
The path of sound credence is through the thick forest of skepticism.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Skepticism, Doubt
The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Comedy
An optimist is a fellow who believes a housefly is looking for a way to get out.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Optimism
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.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Men
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
Topics: Love, Men
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
Topics: Jobs, Ambition, Stress
Love demands infinitely less than friendship.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Friendship, Friends and Friendship
Bad officials are the ones elected by good citizens who do not vote.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Politicians, Politics, Government, One liners
It is the mark of a superior man that, left to himself, he is able endlessly to amuse, interest and entertain himself out of his personal stock of meditations, ideas, criticisms, memories, philosophy, humor and what not.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Solitude
Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Patriotism
The most poignantly personal autobiography of a biographer is the biography he has written of another man.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Writing
Love is an emotion experienced by the many and enjoyed by the few.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Love
No man can think clearly when his fists are clenched.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Optimism, Thoughts, Anger, Mindsets, Positive Attitudes, Thinking, Thought
Whether by design or accident, the fact remains that, with one small exception, no girl with a fancy Christian name has ever diverted the eye of a President of the United States to the matrimonial altar.
—George Jean Nathan
Topics: Marriage
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