Max Beerbohm Quotes
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Most women are not as young as they are painted.
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No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
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Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example.
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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.
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He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself.
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Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
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We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.
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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.
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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.
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Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
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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.
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There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.
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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.
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To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.
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To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
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All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
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The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
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Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
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She was one of those people who say 'I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like.'
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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.
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The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
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Nobody ever died of laughter.
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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 or in legend as having died of laughter.
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When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.