Zitat des Tages von Max Beerbohm:
No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.
Incongruity is the mainspring of laughter.
When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.
The Non-Conformist Conscience makes cowards of us all.
Most women are not as young as they are painted.
All fantasy should have a solid base in reality.
To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.
The delicate balance between modesty and conceit is popularity.
A hundred eyes were fixed on her, and half as many hearts lost to her.
As a teacher, as a propagandist, Mr. Shaw is no good at all, even in his own generation. But as a personality, he is immortal.
We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.
Some people are born to lift heavy weights, some are born to juggle golden balls.
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.
Humility is a virtue, and it is a virtue innate in guests.
It is easier to confess a defect than to claim a quality.
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.
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.
Anything that is worth doing has been done frequently. Things hitherto undone should be given, I suspect, a wide berth.
To give an accurate and exhaustive account of that period would need a far less brilliant pen than mine.
No fine work can be done without concentration and self-sacrifice and toil and doubt.
Nobody ever died of laughter.
You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men.
You will find my last words in the blue folder.
Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best.
I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.
One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
There is much to be said for failure. It is much more interesting than success.
To give and then not feel that one has given is the very best of all ways of giving.
To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people.
Good sense about trivialities is better than nonsense about things that matter.
To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.
I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.