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There is in the human race some dark spirit of recalcitrance, always pulling us in the direction contrary to that in which we are reasonably expected to go.

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
Mankind
Race
Dark
Reasonably
Spirit
Humankind
Human
Pulling
Humans
Direction
Always
Contrary
Expected

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I may be old fashioned, but I am right.
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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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Nobody ever died of laughter.
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The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
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Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.
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Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.
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No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
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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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All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
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Death cancels all engagements.
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I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
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People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
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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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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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Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
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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.
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After all, as a pretty girl once said to me, women are a sex by themselves, so to speak.
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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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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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