Kim DelPizzo

“She was one of those who are born to make chaos cosmic.”

“Only mediocrity can be trusted to be always at its best. Genius must always have lapses proportionate to its triumphs.”

“I could no more marry a man about whom I could not make a fool of myself than I could marry one who made a fool of himself about me. Else had I long ceased to be a spinster.”

“History repeats itself. Historians repeat each other.”

“One is taught to refrain from irony, because mankind does tend to take it literally.”

“He was too much concerned with his own perfection ever to think of admiring any one else.”

“You will find that the woman who is really kind to dogs is always one who has failed to inspire sympathy in men. For the attractive woman, dogs are mere dumb and restless brutes—possibly dangerous, certainly soulless. Yet will coquetry teach her to caress any dog in the presence of a man enslaved by her.”

“She remembered having read that all the greatest men in history had been of less than the middle height.”

“You cannot make a man by standing a sheep on its hind-legs. But by standing a 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 civilisation. Segregate him, and he is no fool. But let him loose among his fellows, and he is lost—he becomes just an unit in unreason.”

Max Beerbohm

Language Proficiency