35 quotes
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.
And Even Now (1920)
He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.
Zuleika Dobson (1911)
The past is a work of art, free of irrelevancies and loose ends.
I was a modest, good-humoured boy. It is Oxford that has made me insufferable.
She was one of those people who say "I don't know anything about music really, but I know what I like."
Zuleika Dobson (1911)
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.
And Even Now (1920)
Strange, when you come to think of it, that of all the countless folk who have lived before our time on this planet not one is known in history or in legend as having died of laughter.
And Even Now (1920)
Oxford walls have a way of belittling us; and the Duke was loath to regard his doom as trivial. Aye, by all minerals we are mocked. Vegetables, yearly deciduous, are far more sympathetic.
Zuleika Dobson (1911)
Lift latch, step in, be welcome, Sir,
Albeit to see you I’m unglad.
Undergraduates owe their happiness chiefly to the consciousness that they are no longer at school. The nonsense which was knocked out of them at school is all put gently back at Oxford or Cambridge.
Just as "pluck" comes of breeding, so is endurance especially an attribute of the artist. Because he can stand outside himself, and (if there be nothing ignoble in them) take pleasure in his own sufferings, the artist has a huge advantage over you and me.
Zuleika Dobson (1911)
The most perfect caricature is that which, on a small surface, with the simplest means, most accurately exaggerates, to the highest point, the peculiarities of a human being, at his most characteristic moment in the most beautiful manner.
The Spirit of Caricature (1901)
Death cancels all engagements.
Zuleika Dobson (1911)
In every human being one or the other of these two instincts is predominant: the active or positive instinct to offer hospitality, the negative or passive instinct to accept it. And either of these instincts is so significant of character that one might as well say that mankind is divisible into two great classes: hosts and guests.
And Even Now (1920)
You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a whole flock of sheep in that position you can make a crowd of men. If man were not a gregarious animal, the world might have achieved, by this time, some real progress towards civilization. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost —- he becomes a unit in unreason.
Zuleika Dobson (1911)