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

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

Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
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.
Max Beerbohm

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

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

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

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

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

Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
Max Beerbohm


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

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

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

Most women are not as young as they are painted.
Max Beerbohm

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

No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
Max Beerbohm

Nobody ever died of laughter.
Max Beerbohm

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

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

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