George Bernard Shaw Quotes
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We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.
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The only man I know who behaves sensibly is my tailor; he takes my measurements anew each time he sees me. The rest go on with their old measurements and expect me to fit them.
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A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.
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If I refuse to allow my leg to be amputated, its mortification and my death may prove that I was wrong; but if I let the leg go, nobody can ever prove that it would not have mortified had I been obstinate. Operation is therefore the safe side for the surgeon as well as the lucrative side.
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Grain by grain, a loaf. Stone upon stone, a palace.
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Affection between adults - if they are really adult in mind and not merely grown up children - and creatures so relatively selfish and cruel as children necessarily are without knowing it or meaning it, cannot be called natural.
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A pornographic novelist is one who exploits the sexual instinct as a prostitute does. A legitimate sex novel elucidates it or brings out its poetry, tragedy, or comedy.
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I aint such a mug as to put up my children to all I know myself.
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Bible worship, though at its best it may achieve sublimity by keeping its head in the skies, may also make itself both ridiculousand dangerous by having its feet off the ground.
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It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that to break a man's spirit is devil's work.
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It is the highest creatures who take the longest to mature, and are the most helpless during their immaturity.
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Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.
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If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.
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What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do. Never lose a chance: it doesn't come every day.
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A Native American elder once described his own inner struggles in this manner: Inside of me there are two dogs. One of the dogs is mean and evil. The other dog is good. The mean dog fights the good dog all the time. When asked which dog wins, he reflected for a moment and replied, The one I feed the most.
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I can't control what life did to me, but I can control how I react. Therein lies the difference.
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Sherlock Holmes was a drug addict without a single amiable trait.
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Men get tired of everything, of heaven no less than of hell; and that all history is nothing but a record of the oscillations of the world between these two extremes. An epoch is but a swing of the pendulum; and each generation thinks the world is progressing because it is always moving.
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If ever I utter an oath again may my soul be blasted to eternal damnation!
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The art of government is the organization of idolatry. The bureaucracy consists of functionaries; the aristocracy, of idols; the democracy, of idolaters. The populace cannot understand the bureaucracy: it can only worship the national idols.
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Taking all the round of professions and occupations, you will find that every man is the worse for being poor; and the doctor is a specially dangerous man when poor.
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After all, the wrong road always leads somewhere.
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I am very subtle; but Man is deeper in his thought than I am. The woman knows that there is no such thing as nothing: the man knows that there is no such day as tomorrow. I do well to worship them.
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To understand a saint, you must hear the devil's advocate; and the same is true of the artist.