Quotes from Sir Henry Maximilian Beerbohm

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.

Death cancels all engagements.

Of all the objects of hatred, a woman once loved is the most hateful.

He heard that whenever a woman was to blame for a disappointment, the best way to avoid a scene was to inculpate oneself.

As a teacher, as a propagandist, Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.

Everywhere he found his precept checkmated by his example.

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.

I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.

Most women are not so young as they are painted.

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.

Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.