Max Beerbohm

“The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.”

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

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

“The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.”

“It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.”

“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.”

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

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

“To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.”

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

“To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.”

“Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.”

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

“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.”

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

“People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.”