Quotes by Max Beerbohm

• To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.
• One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
• Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
• People are either born hosts or born guests.
• People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
• Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.
• You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
• When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.
• It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.
• 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 give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
• To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.
• There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.
• The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
• The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.
• Nobody ever died of laughter.
• We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.
• To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
• You will find my last words in the blue folder.
• Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
• No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
• I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
• I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
• 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.
• Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.
• Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
• As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.
• Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
• All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
• A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.
• 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.
• 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.
• Most women are not as young as they are painted.
• No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.