James Agate quotes
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“New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”
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“Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1944). “Ego 6: Once More the Autobiography of James Agate”
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“I... wonder what it is in the New York air that enables me to sit up till all hours of the night in an atmosphere which in London would make a horse dizzy, but here merely clears the brain.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: The Autobiography of James Agate”
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“Don't pity me now, don't pity me never; I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: The Autobiography of James Agate”
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“Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.”
-- James AgateSource : March 10, 1933 entry in "Ego". Book by James Agate, 1935.
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“Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If, however, you force him to look into it, he'll at once pretend that he sees the object not for what it is but for something that he would like it to be.”
-- James AgateSource : October 14, 1932 entry in "Ego". Book by James Agate, 1935.
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“All I want is a modest place in Mr X's Good Reading, Miss Y's Good Writing, and that new edition of One Thousand Best Bits of Recent Prose.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1942). “Ego 5: Again More of the Autobiography of James Agate”
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“Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”
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“To force myself to earn more money, I determined to spend more.”
-- James Agate -
“Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis.”
-- James Agate -
“My mind is not a bed to be made and remade.”
-- James AgateSource : 'Ego 6' (1944) 9 June 1943
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“The worst of failure of this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1949). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 7, Ego 8, Ego 9”
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“I don't know very much but what I do know I know better than anybody, and I don't want to argue about it…My mind is not a bed to be made and re-made.”
-- James AgateSource : 1943 Journal entry, 9 Jun. Collected in Ego 6 (1944).
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“The maddest phenomenon in this wholly mad world – that the filming or wirelessing of an event, whether it is the Grand National or an attack in force on the Maginot Line, is held to be of more importance than the event itself.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1940). “Ego 4: yet more of the autobiography of James Agate”
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“This was an actress who, for twenty years, had the world at her feet. She kicked it away, and the ball rolled out of her reach.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1940). “Ego 4: yet more of the autobiography of James Agate”
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“In her early days she had that beatific expression characteristic of Victorian prettiness - like a sheep painted by Raphael.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”
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“The Englishman can get along with sex quite perfectly so long as he can pretend that it isn't sex but something else.”
-- James Agate -
“A professional is a man who can do his job when he doesn't feel like it. An amateur is a man who can't do his job when he does feel like it.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: The Autobiography of James Agate”
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“The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1951). “The Later Ego: Consisting of Ego 8 and Ego 9”
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“New Year's resolution: To refrain from saying witty, unkind things, unless they are really witty and irreparably damaging.”
-- James AgateSource : James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”
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