George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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There is nothing on earth more exquisite than a bonny book, with well-placed columns of rich black writing in beautiful borders, and illuminated pictures cunningly inset. But nowadays, instead of looking at books, people read them. A book might as well be one of those orders for bacon and bran.
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You can be a thorough-going Neo-Darwinian without imagination, metaphysics, poetry, conscience, or decency. For 'Natural Selection' has no moral significance: it deals with that part of evolution which has no purpose, no intelligence, and might more appropriately be called accidental selection, or better still, Unnatural Selection, since nothing is more unnatural than an accident. If it could be proved that the whole universe had been produced by such Selection, only fools and rascals could bear to live.
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Communism, being the lay form of Catholicism, and indeed meaning the same thing, has never had any lack of chaplains.
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An English army led by an Irish general: that might be a match for a French army led by an Italian general.
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I make a fortune from criticizing the policy of the government, and then hand it over to the government in taxes to keep it going.
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I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one's business on earth, like the male spider who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like the state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.
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I am very sorry, but I cannot learn languages. I have tried hard, only to find that men of ordinary capacity can learn Sanskrit in less time that it takes me to buy a German Dictionary...
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I am highly susceptible to the force of all truly religious music, especially to the music of my own church, the church of Shelley, Michelangelo, and Beethoven.
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Where equality is undisputed, so also is subordination.
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Some men are born kings; and some are born statesmen. The two are seldom the same.
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Very nice sort of place, Oxford, I should think, for people that like that sort of place. They teach you to be a gentleman there. In the polytechnic they teach you to be an engineer or such like. See?
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Take the utmost care to get well born and well brought up.
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No use slaving for me and then saying you want to be cared for: who cares for a slave? If you come back, come back for the sake of good fellowship; for you’ll get nothing else.
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Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.
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I know Miss Warren is a great devotee of the Gospel of Getting On.
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You sometimes have to answer a woman according to her womanliness, just as you have to answer a fool according to his folly.
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Vulgarity in a king flatters the majority of the nation.
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The greatest thing in life is to die young - but delay it as long as possible.
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Be like the sun and meadow, which are not in the least concerned about the coming winter.
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Everything I eat has been proved by some doctor or other to be a deadly poison, and everything I don't eat has been proved to be indispensable for life. But I go marching on.
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My situation is a solemn one: life is offered to me on the condition of eating beefsteaks. But death is better than cannibalism. My will contains directions for my funeral, which will be followed, not by mourning coaches, but by oxen, sheep, flocks of poultry, and a small traveling aquarium of live fish, all wearing white scarves in honor of the man who perished rather than eat his fellow creatures. It will be, without the exception of Noah's Ark, the most remarkable thing of its kind ever seen.
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An interesting play cannot in the nature of things mean anything but a play in which problems of conduct and character of personalimportance to the audience are raised and suggestively discussed.
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If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the vote.
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God's trustiest lieutenants often lack official credentials. They may be professed atheists who are also men of honour and high public spirit.