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Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.

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
Incongruity
Laughter
Joy
Happiness
Mainspring

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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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Have you noticed ... there is never any third act in a nightmare? They bring you to a climax of terror and then leave you there. They are the work of poor dramatists.
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The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
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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 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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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.
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Heroes are very human, most of them very easily touched by praise.
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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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Death cancels all engagements.
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I may be old fashioned, but I am right.
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All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
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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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Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.
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Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
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A man's work is rather the needful supplement to himself than the outcome of it.
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It is a fact that not once in all my life have I gone out for a walk. I have been taken out for walks but that is another matter.
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But to die of laughter--this, too, seems to me a great euthanasia.
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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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The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
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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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