The gods bestowed on Max [Beerbohm] the gift of perpetual old age.

Human life--that appeared to him the one thing worth investigating. Compared to it there was nothing else of any value. It was true that as one watched life in its curious crucible of pain and pleasure, one could not wear over one's face a mask of glass, nor keep the sulphurous fumes from troubling the brain and making the imagination turbid with monstrous fancies and misshapen dreams.

The only way to get rid of tempation is to yeild to it.

But what is the good of friendship if one cannot say exactly what one means? Anybody can say charming things and try to please and to flatter, but a true friend always says unpleasant things, and does not mind giving pain. Indeed, if he is a really true friend he prefers it, for he knows that then he is doing good.

Each time that one loves is the only time one has ever loved.

The proper aim is to try and reconstruct society on such a basis that poverty will be impossible.

If it took Labouchere three columns to prove that I was forgotten, then there is no difference between fame and obscurity.