Max Beerbohm Quotes
August 24, 1872 – 20 May 1956
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Zuleika, on a desert island, would have spent most of her time in looking for
a man's footprint.
1911Zuleika Dobson, ch.2. 
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More Max Beerbohm Quotes
She was one of those born to make chaos cosmic.
Max Beerbohm— 1911Zuleika Dobson, ch.2.
The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
Max Beerbohm— 1911Zuleika Dobson, ch.4.
Women who love the same man have a kind of bitter freemasonry.
Max Beerbohm— 1911Zuleika Dobson, ch.4.
You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
Max Beerbohm— 1911Zuleika Dobson, ch.6.
Beautyand the lust for learning have yet to be allied.
Max Beerbohm— 1911Zuleika Dobson, ch.7.
The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
Max Beerbohm— King George the Fourth (1894)
Most women are not so young as they are painted.
Max Beerbohm— A Defense of Cosmetics (1895)
To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
Max Beerbohm— "1880" (1895) from The Works of Max Beerbohm (1896)[1]
I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
Max Beerbohm— More, “Going Back to School” (1899)
The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner.
Max Beerbohm— The Spirit of Caricature (1901)
As a teacher, as a propagandist, Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.
Max Beerbohm— Around Theatres, “A Cursory Conspectus of G.B.S” (1924)
She was a young person whose reveries never were in retrospect. For her past was no treasury of distinct memories, all hoarded and classified, some brighter than others and more highly valued. All memories were for her but as notes in one fused radiance that followed her and made more luminous the pathway of her future.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. II (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. III (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
For a young man, sleep is a sure solvent of distress. There whirls not for him in the night any so hideous phantasmagoria as will not become, in the clarity of the next morning, a spruce procession for him to lead. Brief the vague horror of his awakening; memory sweeps back to him, and he sees nothing dreadful after all. "Why not?" is the sun’s bright message to him, and "Why not indeed?" his answer.”
Max Beerbohm— Ch. IV (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. IV (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. VII (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loath to regard his doom as trivial. Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. VII (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
Death cancels all engagements.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. VII (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage over you and me.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. XV (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. XV (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example.
Max Beerbohm— Ch. XV (Zuleika Dobson (1911))
All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
Max Beerbohm— Note to the 1946 edition
I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.
Max Beerbohm— No. 2, The Pines (1914)
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— Hosts and Guests (1918), Harper's Monthly (August 1919)
Men of genius are not quick judges of character. Deep thinking and high imagining blunt that trivial instinct by which you and I size people up.
Max Beerbohm— Quia Imperfectum
It needs no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
Max Beerbohm— Max Beerbohm, Zuleika Dobson (1911).
Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.
Max Beerbohm— Max Beerbohm, Going Back to School.
The nonsense which was knocked out of [undergraduates] at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.
Max Beerbohm— Max Beerbohm, More (1899) "Going Back to School". Oxford Dictionary of Quotations (3rd ed.). Oxford University Press. 1991. p. 37. ISBN 019211560X.
I was not unpopular [at school]... It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
Max Beerbohm— Max Beerbohm, More (1899) "Going Back to School". Knowles, Elizabeth. "Max Beerbohm". Oxford Dictionary of Quotations. Oxford University Press. [4]. Retrieved 2 December 2009.
