George Bernard Shaw

The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if you were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

A government that robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

There are two tragedies in life. One is not to get your heart’s desire. The other is to get it.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

The love of economy is the root of all virtue.

From his cradle to his grave a man never does a single thing which has any FIRST AND FOREMOST object but one – to secure peace of mind, spiritual comfort, for HIMSELF.

Let us, if we must have great actions, make our own so. All action is of infinite elasticity, and the least admits of being inflated with celestial air, until it eclipses the sun and moon.

The reward of a thing well done is having done it.

Every generation laughs at the old fashions, but religiously follows the new.

But you must pay for conformity. All goes well as long as you run with conformists. But you, who are honest men in other particulars, know, that there is alive somewhere a man whose honesty reaches to this point also, that he shall not kneel to false gods, and, on the day when you meet him, you sink into the class of counterfeits.

Sir, I do not call a gamester a dishonest man; but I call him an unsociable man, an unprofitable man. Gaming is a mode of transferring property without producing any intermediate good.

We falsely attribute to men a determined character, putting together all their yesterdays and averaging them, we presume we know them. Pity the man who has character to support, it is worse than a large family, he is the silent poor indeed.

In the highest civilization, the book is still the highest delight. He who has once known its satisfactions is provided with a resource against calamity.

No matter how hard the past is, we can always begin again.

If a man will begin with certainties, he shall end in doubts, but if he will content to begin with doubts, he shall end in certainties.

We bust build dikes of courage to hold back the flood of fear.

Men cease to interest us when we find their limitations.

Laughter is the greatest weapon we have and we, as humans, use it the least.

All the diversity, all the charm, and all the beauty of life are made up of light and shade.

Every other enjoyment malice may destroy; every other panegyric envy may withhold; but no human power can deprive the boaster of his own encomiums.