Max Beerbohm Quotes

78 quotes in 834 categories

• Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.
• To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
• To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
• You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
• The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
• The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
• To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.
• There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.
• It is a part of English hypocrisy or English reserve, that whilst we are fluent enough in grumbling about small inconveniences, we insist on making…
• Improvisation is the essence of good talk. Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out things prepared for us; but let heaven not less…
• There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably…
• Pessimism does win us great happy moments.
• Men prominent in life are mostly hard to converse with. They lack small-talk, and at the same time one doesn't like to confront them with…
• I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect, either physical or spiritual, for what the gods…
• Strange when you come to think of it, that of all countless folk who have lived on this planet, not one is known in history…
• She was one of those people who said I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.
• It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his…
• Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.
• What a lurid life Oscar Wilde does lead - so full of extraordinary incidents. What a chance for the memoir writers of the next century
• Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

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