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Your Englishman, confronted by something abnormal will always pretend that it isn't there. If he can't pretend that, he will look through the object, or round it, or above it or below it, or in any direction except into it. If, however, you force him to look into it, he will 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 Ego (1935)

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More quotes by James Agate

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

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

Ego 4 (1940)

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

Ego 7 (1945)

I like listening to it just as I like looking at a fuchsia drenched with rain.

Ego 8 (1947)

The producer. This is a person engaged by the management to conceal the fact that the players cannot act.

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Attribution

Quote text and notes from Wikiquote: James Agate (page history), available under CC BY-SA 4.0. Source quality and labels are our own summary of what Wikiquote records.