Max Beerbohm quotes - page 2

For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of the next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun's bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" (Max Beerbohm)
In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests. View quote
Max Beerbohm
Death cancels all engagements. View quote
Max Beerbohm
The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner. View quote
Max Beerbohm
The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play. View quote
Max Beerbohm
A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought. View quote
Max Beerbohm
There is much virtue in a window. It is to a human being as a frame is to a painting, as a proscenium to a play, as 'form' to literature. It strongly defines its content. View quote
Max Beerbohm
It is so much easier to covet what one hasn't than to revel in what one has. Also, it is so much easier to be enthusiastic about what exists than about what doesn't. View quote
Max Beerbohm
I am a Tory Anarchist. I should like every one to go about doing just as he pleased - short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed. View quote
Max Beerbohm
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. View quote
Max Beerbohm
One has never known a good man to whom dogs were not dear; but many of the best women have no such fondness. You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes - possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her. (Max Beerbohm)
Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir, Albeit to see you I'm unglad. View quote
Max Beerbohm
Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage over you and me. View quote
Max Beerbohm
Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example. View quote
Max Beerbohm
Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loath to regard his doom as trivial. Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic. View quote
Max Beerbohm
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost -- he becomes a unit in unreason. View quote
Max Beerbohm
He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself. View quote
Max Beerbohm
To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself. View quote
Max Beerbohm
He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else. View quote
Max Beerbohm
She was a young person whose reveries never were in retrospect. For her past was no treasury of distinct memories, all hoarded and classified, some brighter than others and more highly valued. All memories were for her but as the motes in one fused radiance that followed her and made more luminous the pathway of her future. View quote
Max Beerbohm
We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans. (Max Beerbohm)
Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter. View quote
Max Beerbohm
No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'. View quote
Max Beerbohm
People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table. View quote
Max Beerbohm
You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. View quote
Max Beerbohm