James Agate Quotes

• New Year's Resolution: To tolerate fools more gladly, provided this does not encourage them to take up more of my time.

  James Agate

  New Year, Years, Great Year

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”

  51 Copy quote

• 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 Agate

  Jobs, Work, Men

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: The Autobiography of James Agate”

  4 Copy quote

• New Year's resolution: To refrain from saying witty, unkind things, unless they are really witty and irreparably damaging.

  James Agate

  New Year, Witty, Years

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”

  4 Copy quote

• Long experience has taught me that in England nobody goes to the theatre unless he or she has bronchitis.

  James Agate

  Long, Theatre, Experience

  James Agate (1947). “My Theatre Talks”

  54 Copy quote

• In her early days she had that beatific expression characteristic of Victorian prettiness - like a sheep painted by Raphael.

  James Agate

  Women, Sheep, Expression

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”

  7 Copy quote

• 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 Agate

  Mind, Bed, Want

  1943 Journal entry, 9 Jun. Collected in Ego 6 (1944).

  7 Copy quote

• The English instinctively admire any man who has no talent and is modest about it.

  James Agate

  Travel, Home, Men

  James Agate (1951). “The Later Ego: Consisting of Ego 8 and Ego 9”

  9 Copy quote

• 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 Agate

  Women, Years, Feet

  James Agate (1940). “Ego 4: yet more of the autobiography of James Agate”

  7 Copy quote

• Theatre director: a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

  James Agate

  Player, Theatre, Directors

  James Agate (1944). “Ego 6: Once More the Autobiography of James Agate”

  16 Copy quote

• To force myself to earn more money, I determined to spend more.

  James Agate

  Money, Determined, Force

  4 Copy quote

• Perhaps, after all, there is something in the theory that only the ultra-busy can find time for everything.

  James Agate

  Busy, Theory, Ultras

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 4, Ego 5, Ego 6”

  4 Copy quote

• Don't pity me now, don't pity me never; I'm going to do nothing for ever and ever.

  James Agate

  Pity

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: The Autobiography of James Agate”

  7 Copy quote

• The worst of failure of this kind is that it spoils the market for more competent performers.

  James Agate

  Failure, Kind, Worst

  James Agate (1949). “A Shorter Ego: Ego 7, Ego 8, Ego 9”

  4 Copy quote

• 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

  Sex, Long, Englishmen

  7 Copy quote

• 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 Agate

  Horse, New York, Night

  James Agate (1946). “A Shorter Ego: The Autobiography of James Agate”

  7 Copy quote

• 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 Agate

  Reading, Writing, Missing

  James Agate (1942). “Ego 5: Again More of the Autobiography of James Agate”

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Agate

  Looks, Abnormal, Force

  October 14, 1932 entry in "Ego". Book by James Agate, 1935.

  7 Copy quote

• Shaw's plays are the price we pay for Shaw's prefaces.

  James Agate

  Play, Pay

  March 10, 1933 entry in "Ego". Book by James Agate, 1935.

  4 Copy quote

• 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 Agate

  Mad, Events, World

  James Agate (1940). “Ego 4: yet more of the autobiography of James Agate”

  4 Copy quote

• My mind is not a bed to be made and remade.

  James Agate

  Mind, Bed, Made

  'Ego 6' (1944) 9 June 1943

  7 Copy quote

You May Also Like:

Jacques Barzun

Lionel Trilling

Mark Van Doren

Carolyn Heilbrun

John Lukacs

Clifton Fadiman

Mortimer Adler

William James