Max Beerbohm Quotes

I know very well that one must fight, for one is often in contradiction to the spirit of the age.

As soon as you tell me to do one thing, I do the opposite. As soon as someone tells me not to get any more tattoos, I have this intense fire burning inside me to cover myself with them. I don't care if it's self-destructive. I just have that need to rebel.

I always do the contrary of what my coaches tell me.

To be in opposition is not to be a nihilist.

I hate being forced to do things. I hate people telling me what to do, so I'll do the complete opposite. It's a bit self-destructive sometimes.

I don't know what I would have done to rebel. I don't know what I was rebelling against.

When you stop people from doing certain things, there is a good chance that they will do exactly what they have been told to abjure. That is how human nature is.

You tell me what to do and I'll do the opposite.

...that was the way human beings are; they love to be told what to do, but they love even more to fight and not do what they are told, and thus they get entangled in hating the one who told them in the first place.

Sometimes they do things to make me do the opposite of what they think, I think, they think, I am going to do.

I'm fundamentally, I think, an outsider. I do my best work and feel most braced with my back to the wall. It's an odd feeling though, writing aginst the current: difficult entirely to disregard the current. Yet of course I shall.

Sometimes you must go against the wheel's turn.

There's always stuff to rebel against.

I existed before the mainstream. Why would I join them? I watched the mainstream come up, and now I'm watching it collapse. I don't want to be a part of that.

I sort of latch onto roles that have something to fight against.

I typically do the opposite of what people think I am going to do.

I swim against the tide because I like to annoy.

If you want to challenge the system, don't go to bed with it.

so i do what i do best. i move in the opposite direction.

Accordingly if the devil should say, 'Do not drink,' you should reply to him, 'On this very account, because you forbid it, I shall drink, and what is more, I shall drink a generous amount. Thus one must always do the opposite of that which Satan prohibits. What do you think is my reason for drinking wine undiluted, talking freely, and eating more often, if it is not to torment and vex the devil who made up his mind to torment and vex me.

I'm always gonna be in opposition no matter what, but I can still cover my bases and do what I like.

Only dead fish swim with the stream all of the time.

Nothing is more necessary or stronger in us than rebellion.

I think most people have a natural instinct to rebel.

I'll run against the grain till the day I drop?