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

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A quiet city is a contradiction in terms. It is a thing uncanny, spectral.
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Nobody ever died of laughter.
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A man's work is rather the needful supplement to himself than the outcome of it.
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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 hospitable instinct is not wholly altruistic. There is pride and egoism mixed up with it.
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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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Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.
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I may be old fashioned, but I am right.
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Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
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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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Death cancels all engagements.
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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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No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
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Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.
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Only the insane take themselves seriously.
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People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
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The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
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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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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 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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