Max Beerbohm

“It distresses me, this failure to keep pace with the leaders of thought, as they pass into oblivion.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Leader #Pace #Oblivion

“Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#People #Weight #Golden

“To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Kindness #Giving #Way

“People are either born hosts or born guests.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#People #Guests #Host

“No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Work #Sacrifice #Self

“Only the insane take themselves seriously.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Godly #Insanity #Insane

“There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Failure #Interesting #Said

“Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Humility #Acceptance #Genius

“Nobody ever died of laughter.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Happiness #Laughter

“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.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Men #Sheep #Legs

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

#Reality #Fantasy #Should

“When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Art #Soul #Hospitality

“Pessimism does win us great happy moments.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Winning #Optimism #Doe

“Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Love #Men #Kind

“She was one of those people who said I don't know anything about music, but I know what I like.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Music #People #Said

“The one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Education #Real #Asking Questions

“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.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Inspirational #Beautiful #Essence

“History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#History #Doe #Historian

“The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Coward #Non Conformist #Conformist

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

#Greatness #Men #Envy

“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.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Laughter #Thinking #Legends

“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

#Spiritual #Men #Pay

“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.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Men #Vanity #Theme

“There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Dark #Race #Spirit

“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.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Grief #Light #Hypocrisy

“By its very looseness, by its way of evoking rather than defining, suggesting rather than saying, English is a magnificent vehicle for emotional poetry.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Writing #Emotional #Way

“It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks; but that is another matter.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Taken #Matter #Facts

“I believe the twenty-four hour day has come to stay.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Believe #Four #Twenties

“To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Nature #Instinct #Strongest

“Of course we all know that Morris was a wonderful all-round man, but the act of walking round him has always tired me.”
-- Max Beerbohm

#Tired #Men #Wonderful