Quotes from Max Beerbohm

She was one of those who are born to make chaos cosmic.

The unforgettable thing in his life is usually not a thing he has done or left undone, but a thing done to him—some insolence or cruelty for which he could not, or did not, avenge himself.

From those pedestals which intersperse the railing of the Sheldonian, the high grim busts of the Roman Emperors stared down at the fair stranger in the equipage. Zuleika returned their stare with but a casual glance. The inanimate had little charm for her.

He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.

The true conjurer finds his guerdon in the consciousness of work done perfectly and for its own sake.

I could no more marry a man about whom I could not make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster.

Oh," every stair creaked faintly, "I ought to have been marble!

You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost—he becomes just an unit in unreason.

You will think me lamentably crude: my experience of life has been drawn from life itself.

All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.