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

More quotes by Max Beerbohm

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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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Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
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It distresses me, this failure to keep pace with the leaders of thought, as they pass into oblivion.
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But to die of laughter--this, too, seems to me a great euthanasia.
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Every one, even the richest and most munificent of men, pays much by cheque more light-heartedly than he pays little in specie.
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A man's work is rather the needful supplement to himself than the outcome of it.
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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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Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
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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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The hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed up with it.
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Death cancels all engagements.
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For people who like that kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they like.
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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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I may be old fashioned, but I am right.
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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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No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
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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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Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.
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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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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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