Max Beerbohm

To mankind in general Macbeth and Lady Macbeth stand out as the supreme type of all that a host and hostess should not be.

No Roman ever was able to say, 'I dined last night with the Borgias'.

People are either born hosts or born guests.

I need no dictionary of quotations to remind me that the eyes are the windows of the soul.

When hospitality becomes an art it loses its very soul.

We must stop talking about the American dream and start listening to the dreams of Americans.

People who insist on telling their dreams are among the terrors of the breakfast table.

One might well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.

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.

I have known no man of genius who had not to pay, in some affliction or defect either physical or spiritual, for what the gods had given him.

It seems to be a law of nature that no man, unless he has some obvious physical deformity, ever is loth to sit for his portrait.

To destroy is still the strongest instinct in nature.