Daily Inspiration Quote by Max Beerbohm

Beerbohm’s trick here is to flatter “genius” while quietly puncturing the cult of genius. He opens with a crisp reversal: we expect extraordinary minds to be better at everything, including reading people. Instead, he claims the opposite. The line turns on the phrase “trivial instinct” - a sly downgrading of social perception as something almost animal, quick, and a little vulgar. Yet it’s precisely that low-status skill “you and I” supposedly possess. The joke is that the ordinary get to win one.

The intent is less psychological than social: Beerbohm is defending the artist-intellectual type against charges of naivete, even as he keeps them on a leash. “Deep thinking and high imagining” sounds like a compliment, but it’s also an indictment. These elevated habits “blunt” a practical edge, suggesting that the same mental machinery that produces beauty or insight also dulls the opportunistic radar required for everyday human negotiation. Genius, in this frame, is a kind of selective disability.

Subtext: beware the authority of brilliance outside its lane. If imagination can make you porous, then charisma, fraud, and flattery have an easier entry point. There’s also an actor’s backstage realism at work: someone who lives among masks knows that “judging character” is often just speed-reading performance cues. Beerbohm’s era adored great men and great minds; this sentence punctures that reverence with a civilized sneer, reminding us that the most incandescent thinkers can be the easiest marks in the room.