Quotes

“Beauty makes idiots sad and wise men merry.” George Jean Nathan

“A man admires a woman not for what she says, but what she listens to.” George Jean Nathan

“Love is the emotion that a woman feels always for a poodle dog and sometimes for a man.” George Jean Nathan

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

“I drink to make other people interesting.” George Jean Nathan

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

“Patriotism is often an arbitrary veneration of real estate above principles.” George Jean Nathan

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

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

“Criticism is the art of appraising others at one's own value.” George Jean Nathan

“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

“An actor without a playwright is like a hole without a doughnut.” George Jean Nathan

“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

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

“The test of a real comedian is whether you laugh at him before he opens his mouth.” George Jean Nathan

“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

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

“God grant me the serenity to accept the things I cannot change, the courage to change the things I can, and the wisdom to know the difference.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Forgiveness is the final form of love.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“God, give us grace to accept with serenity the things that cannot be changed, courage to change the things which should be changed and the wisdom to distinguish the one from the other.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“The tendency to claim God as an ally for our partisan value and ends is the source of all religious fanaticism.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Man's capacity for justice makes democracy possible, but man's inclination to injustice makes democracy necessary.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“All human sin seems so much worse in its consequences than in its intentions.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Life is a battle between faith and reason in which each feeds upon the other, drawing sustenance from it and destroying it.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Evil is not to be traced back to the individual but to the collective behavior of humanity.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“The final wisdom of life requires not the annulment of incongruity but the achievement of serenity within and above it.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Family life is too intimate to be preserved by the spirit of justice. It can be sustained by a spirit of love which goes beyond justice.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Our age knows nothing but reaction, and leaps from one extreme to another.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Nothing which is true or beautiful or good makes complete sense in any immediate context of history; therefore we must be saved by faith.” Reinhold Niebuhr

“Original sin is that thing about man which makes him capable of conceiving of his own perfection and incapable of achieving it.” Reinhold Niebuhr