Quotes from beerbohm max ii

The Socratic manner is not a game at which two can play.

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.

The dullard's envy of brilliant men is always assuaged by the suspicion that they will come to a bad end.

Great men are but life-sized. Most of them, indeed, are rather short.

Has the gift of laughter been withdrawn from me? I protest that I do still, at the age of forty-seven, laugh often and loud and long. But not, I believe, so long and loud and often as in my less smiling youth. And I am proud, nowadays, of laughing, and grateful to any one who makes me laugh. That is a bad sign. I no longer take laughter as a matter of course.

We do not say of Love that he is myopic. We do not say of Love that he is astigmatic. We say quite simply, Love is blind. We might go further and say, Love is deaf. That would be a profound and obvious truth. We might go further still and say, Love is dumb. But that would be a profound and obvious lie. For love is always an extraordinarily fluent talker.

Vulgarity has its uses. Vulgarity often cuts ice which refinement scrapes at vainly.

I have never regarded any theater as much more than the conclusion to a dinner or the prelude to a supper.

Not philosophy, after all, not humanity, just sheer joyous power of song, is the primal thing in poetry.