George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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The test of good education is seeing how it behaves in a fight.
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No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.
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Make me a beautiful word for doing things tomorrow; for that surely is a great and blessed invention.
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Social questions are too sectional, too topical, too temporal to move a man to the mighty effort which is needed to produce greatpoetry. Prison reform may nerve Charles Reade to produce an effective and businesslike prose melodrama; but it could never produce Hamlet, Faust, or Peer Gynt.
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It's prudent to gain the whole world and lose your own soul. But don't forget that your soul sticks to you if you stick to it; but the world has a way of slipping through your fingers.
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If you can say a thing with one stroke, unanswerably you have style; if not, you are at best a marchande de plaisir; a decorative litt...
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I do not waste my time writing pot-boilers: the pot must be boiled, and even my pot au feu has some chunks of fresh meat in it. ...I have no time to boil myself down; and anyhow I could not do so and preserve all the necessary nutriment and the flavoring on which the digestibility depends.
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The sound body is the product of the sound mind.
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The greatest thing in life is to die young - but delay it as long as possible.
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I prefer the man who calls his nonsense a mystery to him who who pretends it is a weighed, measured, analyzed fact.
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As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.
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To a professional critic theatre-going is the curse of Adam. The play is the evil he is paid to endure in the sweat of his brow; and the sooner it is over, the better.
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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.
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All very fine, Mary; but my old-fashioned common sense is better than your clever modern nonsense.
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Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty.
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We are the living graves of murdered beasts, slaughtered to satisfy our appetites. How can we hope in this world to attain the peace we say we are so anxious for?
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A man's interest in the world is only the overflow from his interest in himself. When you are a child your vessel is not yet full;so you care for nothing but your own affairs. When you grow up, your vessel overflows; and you are a politician, a philosopher, or an explorer and adventurer. In old age the vessel dries up: there is no overflow: you are a child again.
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The only way in which a nation can make itself wealthy and prosperous is by good housekeeping: that is, by providing for its wants in the order of their importance, and allowing no money to be wasted on whims and luxuries until necessities have been thoroughly served.
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You are my inspiration and my folly. You are my light across the sea, my million nameless joys, and my day's wage. You are my divinity, my madness, my selfishness, my transfiguration and purification. You are my rapscallionly fellow vagabond, my tempter and star. I want you.
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Men are always thinking that they are going to do something grandly wicked to their enemies; but when it comes to the point, really bad men are just as rare as really good ones.
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If you leave your art, the world will beat you back to it. The world has not an ambition worth sharing, or a prize worth handling.
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Religion is a good invention in times of stress.
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When an apparent miracle happened.it proved divine mission to the credulous, and proved a contract with the devil to the skeptical.
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An index is a great leveller.