George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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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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Woman's happiness begins with her first love and ends about then...
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If Despotism failed only for want of a capable benevolent despot, what chance has Democracy, which requires a whole population of capable voters.
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Remember always that the least plain sister is the family beauty.
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I have not wasted my life trifling with literary fools in taverns, as Johnson did, when he should have been shaking England with the thunder of his spirit...
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Unless the people can choose their leaders and rulers, and can revoke their choice at intervals long enough to test their measuresby results, the government will be a tyranny exercised in the interests of whatever classes or castes or mobs or cliques have this choice.
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A modern gentleman is necessarily the enemy of his country. Even in war he does not fight to defend it, but to prevent his power of preying on it from passing to a foreigner.
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Whenever I see the word Operation, especially Trifling Operation, I at once write off the patient as dead.
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A child hasn't a grown-up person's appetite for affection. A little of it goes a long way with them; and they like a good imitation of it better than the real thing, as every nurse knows.
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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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When the master has come to do everything through the slave, the slave becomes his master, since he cannot live without him.
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I sing, not arms and the hero, but the philosophic man: he who seeks in contemplation to discover the inner will of the world, ininvention to discover the means of fulfilling that will, and in action to do that will by the so-discovered means.
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Is the devil to have all the passions as well as all the good tunes?
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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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Go on writing plays, my boy, One of these days one of these London producers will go into his office and say to his secretary, "Is there a play from Shaw this morning?" and when she says, "No," he will say, "Well, then we'll have to start on the rubbish." And that's your chance, my boy.
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Only where there is pecuniary equality can the distinction of merit stand out.
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It is assumed that the woman must wait, motionless, until she is wooed. That is how the spider waits for the fly.
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Brains are not everything.
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Two people getting together to write a book is like three people getting together to have a baby. One of them is superfluous.
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Where there is no knowledge ignorance calls itself science.
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Has fear ever held a man back from anything he really wanted?
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The worst sin toward our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them: that's the essence of inhumanity.
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Just as I cannot remember any time when I could not read and write, I cannot remember any time when I did not exercise my imagination in daydreams about women.
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In the right key one can say anything. In the wrong key, nothing: the only delicate part is the establishment of the key.