Max Beerbohm Quotes (68 Quotes)

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.

Pessimism does win us some great moments.

Most women are not as young as they are painted.

Americans have a perfect right to exist. But he did often find himself wishing Mr. Rhodes had not enabled them to exercise that right at Oxford.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.

Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a mans footprint.

No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.

'I don't', she added, 'know anything about music, really. But I know what I like'.

To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.

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.

Every kind of writing is hypocritical.

Nobody ever died of laughter.

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.

All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.

And love levels all, doesn't it Love and the Board school.

She was one of those people who said ''I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.''

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 had given him.

Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.

'After all,' as a pretty girl once said to me, 'women are a sex by themselves, so to speak.'

He cannot see beyond his own nose. Even the fingers he outstretches from it to the world are (as I shall suggest) often invisible to him.

A swear-word in a rustic slum A simple swear-word is to some, To Masefield something more.

Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.

There is always something rather absurd about the past.

Have you ever noticed there is never any third act to a nightmare They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there.

Of course we all know that Morris was a wonderful all-round man, but the act of walking round him has always tired me.

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

The lower one's vitality, the more sensitive one is to great art.

One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.

It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks but that is another matter.

No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.

Men of genius are so few that they ought to atone for their fewness by being at any rate ubiquitous.

Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.

You will find my last words in the blue folder.

Strange when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history for in legend as having died of laughter.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

It seems to be a law of nature that no man ever is loth to sit for his portrait.

It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.

The loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see it suddenly eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own.

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 portrait.

A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.

The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.

To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.