How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Pi...cture the shagginess of Lawrence, his thick beard, his rough-cut clothes, his disdain for all the social and physical niceties. Recall his passionateness--his passion, so to say, for passion itself--his darkness, his gloom. Think back to his appeal to the primary instincts, his personal messianism, his refusal to deal with anything smaller than capital "D" Destiny. Do not neglect his humorlessness, his distaste for all that otherwise passed for being civilized, his blood theories and manifold roiling hatreds. Have you, then, D.H. Lawrence firmly in mind? Splendid. Now reverse all of Lawrence's qualities and you will have a fair beginning notion of Max Beerbohm, who, after allowing that Lawrence was a man of "unquestionable genius," felt it necessary to add, "he never realized, don't you know--he never suspected that to be stark, staring mad is somewhat of a handicap to a writer."LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Max Detweiler: I get a fiendish delight thinking of you as the mother of seven. How do you plan to do it? The Baroness: Darli...ng, haven't you heard of a delightful little thing called boarding school?LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Miss Caswell: Now there's something a girl could make sacrifices for. Bill: And probably has.... Miss Caswell: Sable. Max: Sable? Did she say sable or Gable? Miss Caswell: Either one.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Any adequate analysis or (if I may use the term) rational reconstruction of the method of science must comprise the statement that... the scientist qua scientist accepts or rejects hypotheses; and further that an analysis of that statement would reveal it to entail that the scientist qua scientist makes value judgments.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only he has the calling for politics who is sure that he will not crumble when the world from his point of view is too stupid or b...ase for what he wants to offer. Only he who in the face of all this can say "In spite of all!" has the calling for politics.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
One can say that three pre-eminent qualities are decisive for the politician: passion, a feeling of responsibility, and a sense of... proportion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Only by strict specialization can the scientific worker become fully conscious, for once and perhaps never again in his lifetime, ...that he has achieved something that will endure. A really definitive and good accomplishment is today always a specialized accomplishment. And whoever lacks the capacity to put on blinders, so to speak, and to come up to the idea that the fate of his soul depends upon whether or not he makes the correct conjecture at this passage of this manuscript may as well stay away from science. He will never have what one may call the "personal experience" of science. Without this strange intoxication, ridiculed by every outsider; without this passion ... you have no calling for science and you should do something else. For nothing is worthy of man as man unless he can pursue it with passionate devotion.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The fate of our times is characterized by rationalization and intellectualization and, above all, by the "disenchantment of the wo...rld." Precisely the ultimate and most sublime values have retreated from public life either into the transcendental realm of mystic life or into the brotherliness of direct and personal human relations. It is not accidental that our greatest art is intimate and not monumental.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
No sociologist ... should think himself too good, even in his old age, to make tens of thousands of quite trivial computations in ...his head and perhaps for months at a time. One cannot with impunity try to transfer this task entirely to mechanical assistants if one wishes to figure something, even though the final result is often small indeed.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Rob: Max, if we lived in California, we could play outdoors every day, in the sun. Alvy Singer: Sun is bad for you. Everythin...g our parents said was good is bad. Sun, milk, red meat, college.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »