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 »
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 »
Modern tourist guides have helped raised tourist expectations. And they have provided the natives--from Kaiser Wilhelm down to the... villagers of Chichacestenango--with a detailed and itemized list of what is expected of them and when. These are the up-to- date scripts for actors on the tourists' stage.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
The French Revolution, Fichte's Theory of Knowledge, and Goethe's Wilhelm Meister are the three greatest tendencies of the age. Wh...oever takes offence at this combination, and whoever does not consider a revolution important unless it is blatant and palpable, has not yet risen to the lofty and broad vantage point of the history of mankind.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »
Goethe's whole education and life were those of the artist. He lacks the unconsciousness of the poet. In his autobiography he desc...ribes accurately the life of the author of Wilhelm Meister. For as there is in that book, mingled with a rare and serene wisdom, a certain pettiness or exaggeration of trifles, wisdom applied to produce a constrained and partial and merely well-bred man,--a magnifying of the theatre till life itself is turned into a stage, for which it is our duty to study our parts well, and conduct with propriety and precision,--so in the autobiography, the fault of his education is, so to speak, its merely artistic completeness. Nature is hindered, though she prevails at last in making an unusually catholic impression on the boy. It is the life of a city boy ... defrauded of much which the savage boy enjoys.LESSATTRIBUTION DETAIL »