Humorists

"Disneyworld ... is a historical reconstruction as sanitised as the Kremlin's, and a future vision as uncognisant of contemporary pointers as Peter Pan's. It is a magic carpet under which everything has been swept."

"Ethnically, the Germans are Teutonic...being made up of Vandals, Gepidae, and Goths, all of whom emigrated - south from Sweden in about 500 BC; why they emigrated is not exactly clear, but many scholars believe it was because they saw the way Sweden was going, i.e. neutral."

"Does not even the most sexually democratic of us, among which number I unquestionably count myself, not choke back the tiniest sob at the sight of poor old Denis [Thatcher] stumbling along behind, struggling pitifully to hold his trilby on, as the PM strides across Goose Green with the wind managing only to make her hair look more [[Medusa|Medusan, and the very mines praying she will not crush them under-heel?"

"Strictly speaking, the land does not exist; it is merely dehydrated sea."

"What makes a date so dreadful is the weight of expectation attached to it. There is every chance that you may meet your soulmate, get married, have children and be buried side by side. There is an equal chance that the person you meet will look as if they’ve already been buried for some time."

"Men love women because they are the loveliest things on God's earth. Women love men because chocolate can't mow the lawn. Some men prefer to love other men. Equally, some women prefer to love other women. There is a word to describe this kind of behaviour. Love."

"Libraries are brothels for the mind. Which means that librarians are the madames, greeting the punters, understanding their strange tastes and needs and then pimping their books."

"People who get to the top of any organisation are generally dysfunctional human beings who are overachieving, overcompensating or overbearing."

"Never work for a company that says people are its most important asset. If you wanted to get a mortgage and you said that your only asset was people you would end up living in a tent."

"Talk of the "imperial decay" of your invalid port. "Its gracious withdrawal from perfection, keeping a hint of former majesty withal, as it hovers between oblivion and the divine Untergang of infinite recession.""

"The theory and practice of gamesmanship; or, The art of winning games without actually cheating."

"There are those who believe that the sole duty of the poker gamesman is to build up his reputation for impenetrability and toughness by suggesting that he last played poker by the light of a moon made more brilliant by the snows of the Yukon, and that his opponents were two white slave traffickers, a ticket-of-leave man and a deserter from the Foreign Legion. To me this is ridiculously far-fetched, but I do believe that a trace of American accent – West Coast – casts a small shadow of apprehension over the minds of English players."

"In our small chess community in Marylebone it would be mock modesty on my part to deny that I have built up for myself a considerable name without ever actually having won a single game. Even the best players are sometimes beaten, and that is precisely what happens to me."

"How to be one up - how to make the other man feel that something has gone wrong, however slightly."

""Yes, but not in the South", with slight adjustments, will do for any argument about any place, if not about any person."

"A good general rule is to state that the bouquet is better than the taste, and vice versa."

"Although there exist many thousand subjects for elegant conversation, there are persons who cannot meet a cripple without talking about feet."

"It is a mark of insincerity of purpose to spend one's time in looking for the sacred Emperor in the low-class tea-shops."

"When struck by a thunderbolt it is unnecessary to consult the Book of Dates as to the precise meaning of the omen."

"Bramah's books fall into two very unequal categories. Some, fortunately the smaller part, record the adventures of the blind detective, Max Carrados. These are competent, mediocre books. The rest are parodic in nature: they pass themselves off as translations from the Chinese, and their boundless perfection achieved the unconditional praise of Hilaire Belloc in 1922. Their names: The Wallet of Kai Lung (1900), Kai Lung's Golden Hours (1922), Kai Lung Unrolls His Mat (1928), The Mirror of Kong Ho (1931), The Moon of Much Gladness (1936)."

"Better a dish of husks to the accompaniment of a muted lute than to be satiated with stewed shark's fin and rich spiced wine of which the cost is frequently mentioned by the provider."

"When an alluring woman comes in at the door," warningly traced the austere Kien-fi on the margin of his well-known essay, "discretion may be found up the chimney". It is incredible that beneath this ever-timely reminder an obscure disciple should have added the words: "The wiser the sage, the more profound the folly."

"Ernest Bramah's China, then, is the fantastic bogus China of convention, not the real historical thing at all. He wrote of it in a prose so perfectly conceived that it becomes a miracle of style. As Hilaire Belloc once observed, the sly humor and philosophy of Bramah's stories is a trick he achieves by pretending to adapt the flavor of Chinese literary conventions into the English. But the thing I love most about the tales is their irony and the brilliance of their wit."

"He who has failed three times sets up as an instructor."

"He is capable of any crime, from reviling the Classics to diverting water courses."

"Eat in the dark the bargain that you purchased in the dusk."

"Excellence," besought Kai Lung, not without misgivings,"how many warriors, each having some actual existence, are there in your never-failing band?" "For all purposes save those of attack and defence there are fifteen score of the best and bravest, as their pay-sheets well attest," was the confident response. "In a strictly literal sense, however, there are no more than can be seen on a mist-enshrouded day with a resolutely closed eye."

"One learns to itch where one can scratch."

"However deep you dig a well it affords no refuge in the time of flood."

"One may ride upon a tiger's back but it is fatal to dismount."

"Do not adjust your sandals while passing through a melon-field, nor yet arrange your hat beneath an orange-tree."

"After secretly observing the unstudied grace of her movements, the most celebrated picture-maker of the province burned the implements of his craft, and began life anew as a trainer of performing elephants."

"The one-legged never stumble."

"It is well said: 'He who lacks a single tael sees many bargains,'" replied Sun Wei, a refined bitterness weighing the import of his words. "Truly this person's friends in the Upper Air are a never-failing lantern behind his back."

"At the mention of the name and offence of this degraded being a great sound went up from the entire multitude – a universal cry of execration, not greatly dissimilar from that which may be frequently heard in the crowded Temple of Impartiality when the one whose duty it is to take up, at a venture, the folded papers, announces that the sublime Emperor, or some mandarin of exalted rank, has been so fortunate as to hold the winning number in the Annual State Lottery."

"Alas! It is well written, "The road to eminence lies through the cheap and exceedingly uninviting eating-houses.""

"At this display the elder and less attractive of the maidens fled, uttering loud and continuous cries of apprehension in order to conceal the direction of her flight."

"There are few situations in life that cannot be honourably settled, and without loss of time, either by suicide, a bag of gold, or by thrusting a despised antagonist over the edge of a precipice upon a dark night."

"When Ling was communicating to any person the signs by which messengers might find him, he was compelled to add, "the neighbourhood in which this contemptible person resides is that officially known as 'the mean quarter favoured by the lower class of those who murder by treachery'," and for this reason he was not always treated with the regard to which his attainments entitled him, or which he would have unquestionably received had he been able to describe himself as of "the partly-drained and uninfected area reserved to Mandarins and their friends.""

"Before hastening to secure a possible reward of five taels by dragging an unobservant person away from a falling building, examine well his features lest you find, when too late, that it is one to whom you are indebted for double that amount."

"In his countenance this person read an expression of no-encouragement towards his venture."

"Should a person on returning from the city discover his house to be in flames, let him examine well the change which he has received from the chair-carrier before it is too late; for evil never travels alone."

"However entrancing it is to wander unchecked through a garden of bright images, are we not enticing your mind from another subject of almost equal importance?"

"If you knew how I had pored over many essays – how they fill me with marvel – how I can't conceive what it would be like to write as you do! – This is sober truth: – but I shan't attempt to say how much pleasure your letter gave me."

"But what did Mr. Beerbohm give to the essay and what did he take from it? That is a much more complicated question, for here we have an essayist who has concentrated on the work and is without doubt the prince of his profession."

"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."

"How might one describe Max Beerbohm to someone who knows nothing about him? Well, for a start, one might imagine D.H. Lawrence. Picture 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.”"

"To say that a man is vain means merely that he is pleased with the effect he produces on other people. A conceited man is satisfied with the effect he produces on himself."

"After his very early days, when he gambolled with an ornate and consciously absurd vocabulary, he wrote supremely well. His essay on Venice, originally an article in the Daily Mail, is a model not only of imaginative observation but of variety of structure. It is, I believe, the best travel sketch ever written."

"I felt, when I was listening to them, that I was listening to the voice of the last civilized man on earth. Max's broadcasts justify the entire invention of broadcasting."