Max Beerbohm
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.Collection: Work
People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.Collection: Dreams
To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.Collection: Nature
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.Collection: Teacher
You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.Collection: Sympathy
To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.Collection: Best
There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.Collection: Failure
We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.Collection: Dreams
All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.
Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.
People are either born hosts or born guests.
Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.
One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
Nobody ever died of laughter.
The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.
It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.
You will find my last words in the blue folder.
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.
Most women are not as young as they are painted.
Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
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.
To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.
I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
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.
The one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions.Collection: Education
Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.Collection: Humility
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.Collection: Men
Sometimes I feel that I am a natural born genius in a field of human endeavor that hasn't been invented yetCollection: Genius
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.Collection: Beautiful
History does not repeat itself. The historians repeat one another.Collection: History
Only the insane take themselves seriously.Collection: Godly
People seem to think there is something inherently noble and virtuous in the desire to go for a walk.Collection: Thinking
Golf: The most ... perfect expression of National Stupidity.Collection: Golf
Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.Collection: Men
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.Collection: Laughter
Pessimism does win us great happy moments.Collection: Winning
Heroes are very human, most of them; very easily touched by praise.Collection: Hero
To destroy is still the strongest instinct of our nature.Collection: Nature
The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.Collection: Wise