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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

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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
Worth
Accident
Often
Literary
Nothing
Denied
Idiot
Strenuous
Accidents
Sages
Hearing
Bestowed
Gift
Idiots
Mere
Sage

More quotes by Max Beerbohm

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I may be old fashioned, but I am right.
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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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Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
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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.
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It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.
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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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Only the insane take themselves seriously.
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Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.
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No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
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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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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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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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Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
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People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
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I prefer that laughter shall take me unawares. Only so can it master and dissolve me.
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The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
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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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For people who like that kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they like.
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The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
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The one real goal of education is to leave a person asking questions.
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