Because of the influence of the cinema, most reports or stories of violence are so pictorial that they lack content or meaning. The camera brings them to our eyes, but does not settle them in our minds, nor in time.

Life — how curious is that habit that makes us think it is not here, but elsewhere.

Sooner or later, the great men turn out to be all alike. They never stop working. They never lose a minute. It is very depressing.

We are used to the actions of human beings, not to their stillness.

It is exciting and emancipating to believe we are one of nature's latest experiments, but what if the experiment is unsuccessful?

The businessman who is a novelist is able to drop in on literature and feel no suicidal loss of esteem if the lady is not at home, and he can spend his life preparing without fuss for the awful interview.

Among the masked dandies of Edwardian comedy, Max Beerbohm is the most happily armored by a deep and almost innocent love of himself as a work of art.