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