Max Beerbohm Quotes (36 quotes) | Quotes of famous people

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Max Beerbohm

Max Beerbohm: 36 quotes 0 likes

Famous Max Beerbohm Quotes

“Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.”

Max Beerbohm

Quoted in Max by David Cecil (1964), ch. 2

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

The Spirit of Caricature (1901)

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Laughter (1920)
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Servants (1918)
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)

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

Max Beerbohm

"1880" (1895) from The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896) http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/twomb10.txt

“As a teacher, as a propagandist, Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.”

Max Beerbohm

Around Theatres, “A Cursory Conspectus of G.B.S” (1924)

Max Beerbohm Quotes about men

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Quia Imperfectum
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IX

“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

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. VI

“The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IV

Max Beerbohm Quotes

“The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. XV

Game

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

No. 2, The Pines (1914)
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)

God , Affliction

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. VII

Way

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IX

“She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like."”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IX

People , Music

“He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. VII

Disappointment , Way

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Quia Imperfectum
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)

People

“The Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.”

Max Beerbohm

"A Note on George the Fourth," http://books.google.com/books?id=NA0HAQAAIAAJ&q=%22The+NonConformist+Conscience+makes+cowards+of+us+all%22&pg=PA250#v=onepage The Yellow Book (October 1894)
"King George the Fourth," http://books.google.com/books?id=OvlGAAAAYAAJ&q=%22The+Nonconformist+Conscience+makes+cowards+of+us+all%22&pg=PA63#v=onepage The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896)

“The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.”

Max Beerbohm

Comment

Art , Past

“He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. III

Thinking , Perfection

“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.”

Max Beerbohm book Mainly on the Air

"Fenestralia" http://books.google.com/books?id=YZMhAAAAMAAJ&q=%22There+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%22&pg=PA147#v=onepage, Mainly on the Air (1946), The Atlantic ( April 1944 http://books.google.com/books?id=5KAGAQAAIAAJ&q=%22There+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%22&pg=PA85#v=onepage)

Literature , Painting

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. II

Memory , Past , Future , Personality

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Quia Imperfectum (1920)
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)

Law , Nature

“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

his answer.”
Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. IV

Sleep , Memory , Sun , Night

“Most women are not so young as they are painted.”

Max Beerbohm

A Defense of Cosmetics (1895)

Women , Painting

“All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.”

Max Beerbohm

Note to the 1946 edition
Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911)

Reality

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

Max Beerbohm

More, “Going Back to School” (1899)

Boy

“Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir,
Albeit to see you I’m unglad.”

Max Beerbohm

A Luncheon

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. XV

Pleasure , Suffering

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. VIII

“Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.”

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. II

Time

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

Max Beerbohm

Source: Zuleika Dobson http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/zdbsn11.txt (1911), Ch. XIII

Love , Hate

“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.”

Max Beerbohm

Hosts and Guests (1918), Harper's Monthly ( August 1919 http://books.google.com/books?id=H2Q2AQAAMAAJ&q=%22Mankind+is+divisible+into+two+great+classes+hosts+and+guests%22&pg=PA425#v=onepage)
And Even Now http://www.gutenberg.org/dirs/etext99/evnow10.txt (1920)