Max Beerbohm Quotes
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Strange when you come to think of it, that of all countless folk who have lived on this planet, not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.
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Of course we all know that Morris was a wonderful all-round man, but the act of walking round him has always tired me.
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Every kind of writing is hypocritical.
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I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
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It is a part of English hypocrisy or English reserve, that whilst we are fluent enough in grumbling about small inconveniences, we insist on making light of any great difficulties or grief's that may beset us.
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To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature.
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The critic who justly admires all kinds of things simultaneously cannot love any one of them.
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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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When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.
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Only the insane take themselves seriously.
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Beauty and the lust for learning have yet to be allied.
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I prefer that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can it master and dissolve me.
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Somehow, our sense of justice never turns in its sleep till long after the sense of injustice in others has been thoroughly aroused.
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Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.
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Reverence is a good thing, and part of its value is that the more we revere a man, the more sharply are we struck by anything in him (and there is always much) that is incongruous with his greatness.
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Sometimes I feel that I am a natural born genius in a field of human endeavor that hasn't been invented yet
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People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for a walk.
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But to die of laughter--this, too, seems to me a great euthanasia.
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Improvisation is the essence of good talk. Heaven defend us from the talker who doles out things prepared for us; but let heaven not less defend us from the beautiful spontaneous writer who puts his trust in the inspiration of the moment.
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She was one of those people who said I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.
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The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
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There is laughter that goes so far as to lose all touch with its motive, and to exist only, grossly, in itself. This is laughter at its best. A man to whom such laughter has often been granted may happen to die in a work-house. No matter. I will not admit that he has failed in life. Another man, who has never laughed thus, may be buried in Westminster Abbey, leaving more than a million pounds overhead. What then? I regard him as a failure.
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People are either born hosts or born guests.
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You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
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Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
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Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.
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To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
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No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
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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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Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.
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