Quote

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.

Max Beerbohm

Change background

T
T
T

Change font

TAGS & TOPICS

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
Great
Class
Active
Instincts
Every
Two
Offers
Guests
Character
Negative
Passive
Wells
Accept
Classes
Might
Positive
Host
Divisible
Human
Mankind
Offer
Predominant
Humans
Accepting
Significant
Hosts
Well
Either
Instinct
Hospitality

More quotes by Max Beerbohm

Image
To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
Max Beerbohm
Image
But to die of laughter--this, too, seems to me a great euthanasia.
Max Beerbohm
Image
Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
Max Beerbohm
Image
The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.
Max Beerbohm
Image
It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.
Max Beerbohm
Image
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
Image
Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for a man's footprint.
Max Beerbohm
Image
A man's work is rather the needful supplement to himself than the outcome of it.
Max Beerbohm
Image
Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.
Max Beerbohm
Image
No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
Max Beerbohm
Image
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.
Max Beerbohm
Image
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
Image
For people who like that kind of thing, this is the kind of thing they like.
Max Beerbohm
Image
Only the insane take themselves seriously.
Max Beerbohm
Image
Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.
Max Beerbohm
Image
People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.
Max Beerbohm
Image
Nobody ever died of laughter.
Max Beerbohm
Image
The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
Max Beerbohm
Image
Somehow, our sense of justice never turns in its sleep till long after the sense of injustice in others has been thoroughly aroused.
Max Beerbohm
Image
The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
Max Beerbohm