Famous quotes
Quotes by famous people, credited to who said them. Your own quotes must not match any of these. More are added all the time. 1,158,269 quotes Who coined it · How we decide
EnglishItalianoPolskiעבריתFrançaisPortuguêsفارسیEspañol中文РусскийDeutschالعربيةहिन्दी日本語ΕλληνικάLatina
Max Beerbohm
36 quotes
“The Nonconformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) first seen 1894 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Note on George the Fourth," The Yellow Book (October 1894)
“Most women are not so young as they are painted.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) first seen 1895 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: A Defense of Cosmetics (1895)
“To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) first seen 1880 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: 1880" (1895) from The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896)
“I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) first seen 1899 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: More, “Going Back to School” (1899)
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1901 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: The Spirit of Caricature (1901)
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1924 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Around Theatres, “A Cursory Conspectus of G.B.S” (1924)
“The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir, Albeit to see you I’m unglad.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quoted in Max by David Cecil (1964), ch. 2
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1944 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Fenestralia", Mainly on the Air (1946), The Atlantic (April 1944)
“Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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?" his answer.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Death cancels all engagements.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) first seen 1946 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Note to the 1946 edition
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: No. 2, The Pines (1914)
“No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.”
Max Beerbohm (1872–1956) first seen 1914 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Books Within Books (1914)
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Hosts and Guests (1918), Harper's Monthly (August 1919)
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1918 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Servants (1918)
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Laughter (1920)
“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 (1872–1956) first seen 1920 wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
Recorded in: Quia Imperfectum (1920)
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source
“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 (1872–1956) said by 1956 at the latest wikiquote, CC BY-SA 4.0 source