Max Beerbohm Quotes

Not That I Had Any Special Reason For Hating School. Strange As It May Seem To My Readers, I Was Not Unpopular There. I Was A Modest, Good-humoured Boy. It Is Oxford That Has Made Me Insufferable.

The Socratic Manner Is Not A Game At Which Two Can Play.

But To Die Of Laughter--this, Too, Seems To Me A Great Euthanasia.

Few, As I Have Said, Are The Humorists Who Can Induce This State. To Master And Dissolve Us, To Give Us The Joy Of Being Worn Down And Tired Out With Laughter, Is A Success To Be Won By No Man Save In Virtue Of A Rare Staying-power. Laughter Becomes Extreme Only If It Be Consecutive. There Must Be No Pauses For Recovery. Touch-and-go Humour, However Happy, Is Not Enough. The Jester Must Be Able To Grapple His Theme And Hang On To It, Twisting It This Way And That, And Making It Yield Magically All Manner Of Strange And Precious Things.

I Was A Modest, Good-humoured Boy. It Is Oxford That Has Made Me Insufferable.

I Prefer That Laughter Shall Take Me Unawares. Only So Can It Master And Dissolve Me.

For People Who Like That Kind Of Thing, This Is The Kind Of Thing They Like.

The Non-conformist Conscience Makes Cowards Of Us All.

The Hospitable Instinct Is Not Wholly Altruistic. There Is Pride And Egoism Mixed Up With It.

A Quiet City Is A Contradiction In Terms. It Is A Thing Uncanny, Spectral.

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.

What A Lurid Life Oscar Wilde Does Lead - So Full Of Extraordinary Incidents. What A Chance For The Memoir Writers Of The Next Century