Quotes By Max Beerbohm

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

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

People are either born hosts or born guests.

Most women are not as young as they are painted.

Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.

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.

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.

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.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.

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

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

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

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

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

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.

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.

There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.

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

You will find my last words in the blue folder.

Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.

All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

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

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

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

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

The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.

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

To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.