Max Beerbohm

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.

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

Nobody ever died of laughter.

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

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

You will find my last words in the blue folder.

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

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

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

You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.

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.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.

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.

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.

Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.

People are either born hosts or born guests.

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

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

The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

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

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

Most women are not as young as they are painted.

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

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

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

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

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.

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.

The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.

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

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

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