Max Beerbohm Quotes

She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like."

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.

Death cancels all engagements.

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.

He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself.

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.

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

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.”

He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.

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.

Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.

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.

Only the insane take themselves quite seriously.

Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir,
Albeit to see you I’m unglad.

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