George Bernard Shaw

“Life is like a flame that is always burning itself out...”

“I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.”

“Tapferkeit wird dadurch nicht schlechter, dass sie ein wenig schwerfällt.”

“A man learns to skate by staggering about and making a fool of himself. Indeed he progresses in all things by resolutely making a fool of himself.”

“Those who talk most about the blessings of marriage and the constancy of its vows are the very people who declare that if the chain were broken and the prisoners left free to choose, the whole social fabric would fly asunder. You cannot have the argument both ways. If the prisoner is happy, why lock him in? If he is not, why pretend that he is?”

“Physically there is nothing to distinguish human society from the farm-yard except that children are more troublesome and costly than chickens and calves and that men and women are not so completely enslaved as farm stock.”

“Confusing monogamy with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other error.”

“The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination”

“No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.”

“The only man who behaved sensibly was my tailor: he took my measure anew every time he saw me, whilst all the rest went on with their old measurements and expected them to fit me.”

“[H]e is a barbarian, and thinks that the customs of his tribe and island are the laws of nature.”

“The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.”

“I have defined the hundred per cent American as ninety-nine per cent an idiot.”

“You'll never have a quiet world till you knock the patriotism out of the human race.”

“As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death. ”

“The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.”

“[Chess] is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something very clever, when they are only wasting their time. ”

“Martyrdom, sir, is what these people like: it is the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.”

“Marriage is to me apostasy, profanation of the sanctuary of my soul, violation of my manhood, sale of my birthright, shameful surrender, ignominious capitulation, acceptance of defeat.”

“You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you have lost something.”

“England and America are two countries separated by the same language.”

“Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one's heart; but death is a splendid thing—a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.”

“Style is a sort of melody that comes into my sentences by itself. If a writer says what he has to say as accurately and effectively as he can, his style will take care of itself.”

“The most tragic thing in the world is a man of genius who is not a man of honor.”

“The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.”

“Your friends are all the dullest dogs I know. They are not beautiful: they are only decorated. They are not clean: they are only shaved and starched. They are not dignified: they are only fashionably dressed. They are not educated: they are only college passmen. They are not religious: they are only pewrenters. They are not moral: they are only conventional. They are not virtuous: they are only cowardly. They are not even vicious: they are only “frail.” They are not artistic: they are only lascivious. They are not prosperous: they are only rich. They are not loyal, they are only servile; not dutiful, only sheepish; not public spirited, only patriotic; not courageous, only quarrelsome; not determined, only obstinate; not masterful, only domineering; not self-controlled, only obtuse; not self-respecting, only vain; not kind, only sentimental; not social, only gregarious; not considerate, only polite; not intelligent, only opinionated; not progressive, only factious; not imaginative, only superstitious; not just, only vindictive; not generous, only propitiatory; not disciplined, only cowed; and not truthful at all: liars every one of them, to the very backbone of their souls.”

“The ultimate form of censorship is assassination. ”

“Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.”

“One man that has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.”

“The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.”

“My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.”

“If if's and and's were pots and pans, there'd be no need for tinkers.”

“We should all be obliged to appear before a board every five years and justify our existence...on pain of liquidation”

“A tragic situation exists precisely when virtue does NOT triumph but when it is still felt that man is nobler than the forces which destroy him.”

“We cut the throat of a calf and hang it up by the heels to bleed to death so that our veal cutlet may be white; we nail geese to a board and cram them with food because we like the taste of liver disease; we tear birds to pieces to decorate our women's hats; we mutilate domestic animals for no reason at all except to follow an instinctively cruel fashion; and we connive at the most abominable tortures in the hope of discovering some magical cure for our own diseases by them.”

“He who has never hoped can never despair”

“The reason why the continental European is, to the Englishman or American, so surprisingly ignorant of the Bible, is that the authorized English version is a great work of literary art, and the continental versions are comparatively artless.”

“What is the matter with universities is that the students are school children, whereas it is of the very essence of university education that they should be adults.”

“The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation, because occupation means pre-occupation; and the pre-occupied person is neither happy nor unhappy, but simply alive and active. That is why it is necessary to happiness that one should be tired.”

“There is, on the whole, nothing on earth intended for innocent people so horrible as a school. To begin with, it is a prison. But in some respects more cruel than a prison. In a prison, for instance, you are not forced to read books written by the warders and the governor. . . .In the prison you are not forced to sit listening to turnkeys discoursing without charm or interest on subjects that they don't understand and don't care about, and therefore incapable of making you understand or care about. In a prison they may torture your body; but they do not torture your brains.”

“You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother's milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.”

“Assassination is the extreme form of censorship.”

“A book is like a child: it is easier to bring it into the world than to control it when it is launched there.”

“Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.”

“A solider always assumes that he is going to shoot, not to be shot.”

“All professions are conspiracies against the laity.”

“Get out of my way; for I won't stop for you.”

“An Irishman's heart is nothing but his imagination.”

“Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.”

“Morals are a luxury of the rich.”