Max Beerbohm Quotes

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

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

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.

The one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions.

Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men.

Sometimes I feel that I am a natural born genius in a field of human endeavor that hasn't been invented yet

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.

Most women are not as young as they are painted.

People are either born hosts or born guests.

Fate weaves the darkness, which is perhaps why she weaves so badly.

Only the insane take themselves seriously.

Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.

History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.

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

Golf: The most ... perfect expression of National Stupidity.

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

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.

People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for a walk.

Pessimism does win us great happy moments.

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

Heroes are very human, most of them; very easily touched by praise.

I may be old fashioned, but I am right.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature.

Men prominent in life are mostly hard to converse with. They lack small-talk, and at the same time one doesn't like to confront them with their own great themes.