George Bernard Shaw

Gentle Jesus, meek and mild’ is a snivelling modern invention, with no warrant in the gospels.

You don’t stop laughing when you grow old, you grow old when you stop laughing.

He hates chess. He says it is a foolish expedient for making idle people believe they are doing something clever when they are only wasting their time.

Reasonable people adapt themselves to the world. Unreasonable people attempt to adapt the world to themselves. All progress, therefore, depends on unreasonable people.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

I’m an atheist and I thank God for it.

It is hard to go beyond your public. If they are satisfied with cheap performance, you will not easily arrive at better. If they know what is good, and require it. you will aspire and burn until you achieve it. But from time to time, in history, men are born a whole age too soon.

We do not learn by inference and deduction and the application of mathematics to philosophy, but by direct intercourse and sympathy.

Never tell the truth to people who are not worthy of it.

He that will enjoy the brightness of sunshine, must quit the coolness of the shade.

Do not do unto others as you expect they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Patron: One who countenances, supports or protects. Commonly a wretch who supports with insolence, and is paid with flattery.

Let me never fall into the vulgar mistake of dreaming that I am persecuted whenever I am contradicted.

Action speaks louder than words but not nearly as often.

Life is short, but there is always time for courtesy.

Your dreams may have shattered, but that doesn’t mean they are over. They can still be turned into a mosaic of success.

To keep your secret is wisdom, but to expect others to keep it is folly.

Anger and jealousy can no more bear to lose sight of their objects than love.

Nothing can bring you peace but yourself.

Hope is itself a species of happiness, and, perhaps, the chief happiness which this world affords: but, like all other pleasures immoderately enjoyed, the excesses of hope must be expiated by pain; and expectations improperly indulged, must end in disappointment. If it be asked, what is the improper expectation which it is dangerous to indulge, experience will quickly answer, that it is such expectation as is dictated not by reason, but by desire; expectation raised, not by the common occurrences of life, but by the wants of the expectant; an expectation that requires the common course of things to be changed, and the general rules of action to be broken.

A man must make his opportunity, as oft as find it.