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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

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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
Beautiful
Trust
Talkers
Good
Inspiration
Improvisation
Things
Talk
Spontaneous
Heaven
Defend
Less
Puts
Moment
Prepared
Inspirational
Essence
Moments
Writer
Talker

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I am a Tory anarchist. I should like everyone to go about doing just as he pleased - short of altering any of the things to which I have grown accustomed.
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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.
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All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
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Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.
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The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
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Heroes are very human, most of them very easily touched by praise.
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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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I prefer that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can it master and dissolve me.
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No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
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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.
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I may be old fashioned, but I am right.
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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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No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
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To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
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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.
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For people who like that kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they like.
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Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
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But to die of laughter--this, too, seems to me a great euthanasia.
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True dandyism is the result of an artistic temperament working upon a fine body within the wide limits of fashion.
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