George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.
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During the Suffragette revolt of 1913 I[urged] that what was needed was not the vote, but a constitutional amendment enactingthat all representative bodies shall consist of women and men in equal numbers, whether elected or nominated or coopted or registered or picked up in the street like a coroner's jury. In the case of elected bodies the only way of effecting this is by the Coupled Vote. The representative unit must not be a man or a woman but a man and a woman.
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Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.
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Words are only postage stamps delivering the object for you to unwrap...
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If you do things merely because you think some other fool expects you to do them, and he expects you to do them because he thinks you expect him to expect you to do them, it will end in everybody doing what nobody wants to do, which is in my opinion a silly state of things.
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It is necessary for the welfare of society that genius should be privileged to utter sedition, to blaspheme, to outrage good taste, to corrupt the youthful mind, and generally to scandalize one's uncles.
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It is a woman's business to get married as soon as possible, and a man's to keep unmarried as long as he can.
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While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth?
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Effectiveness of assertion is the alpha and omega of style.
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The pianoforte is the most important of all musical instruments; its invention was to music what the invention of printing was to poetry.
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When a bishop at the first shot abandons the worship of Christ and rallies his flock round the altar of Mars, he may be acting patriotically... but that does not justify him in pretending...that Christ is, in effect, Mars.
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I know I began as a passion and have ended as a habit, like all husbands.
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It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.
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Heaven, as conventionally conceived, is a place so inane, so dull, so useless, so miserable that nobody has ever ventured to describe a whole day in heaven, though plenty of people have described a day at the seaside.
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Nothing is worth doing unless the consequences may be serious.
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You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death.
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Most people do not pray; they only beg.
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My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.
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The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty . . . . Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys basic people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.
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People have pointed out evidences of personal feeling in my notices as if they were accusing me of a misdemeanor, not knowing that criticism written without personal feeling is not worth reading. It is the capacity for making good or bad art a personal matter that makes a man a critic.
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The devil can quote Shakespeare for his own purpose.
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Well, sir, you never can tell. That's a principle in life with me, sir, if you'll excuse my having such a thing.
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Make it compulsory for a doctor using a brass plate to have inscribed on it, in addition to the letters indicating his qualifications, the words 'Remember that I too am mortal'.
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Man can climb to the highest summits, but he cannot dwell there long.