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Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.
Max Beerbohm
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Max Beerbohm
Age: 83 †
Born: 1872
Born: August 24
Died: 1956
Died: May 20
Caricaturist
Comedian
Drawer
Essayist
Illustrator
Journalist
Literary Critic
Novelist
Painter
Poet
Watercolorist
Writer
London
England
Sir Max Beerbohm
Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm
Sir Beerbohm
Henry Maximilian Beerbohm
Best
Lapses
Must
Triumphs
Always
Mediocrity
Trusted
Triumph
Acceptance
Humility
Genius
Proportionate
More quotes by Max Beerbohm
The literary gift is a mere accident - is as often bestowed on idiots who have nothing to say worth hearing as it is denied to strenuous sages.
Max Beerbohm
The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
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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
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.
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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
A crowd, proportionately to its size, magnifies all that in its units pertains to the emotions, and diminishes all that in them pertains to thought.
Max Beerbohm
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.
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Heroes are very human, most of them very easily touched by praise.
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The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.
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The hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed up with it.
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Fate weaves the darkness, which is perhaps why she weaves so badly.
Max Beerbohm
The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
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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
It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.
Max Beerbohm
The loveliest face in all the world will not please you if you see it suddenly eye to eye, at a distance of half an inch from your own.
Max Beerbohm
Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.
Max Beerbohm
Somehow, our sense of justice never turns in its sleep till long after the sense of injustice in others has been thoroughly aroused.
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In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
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Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
Max Beerbohm
All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
Max Beerbohm
