George Bernard Shaw

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

Self-denial is not a virtue, it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

People become attached to their burdens sometimes more than the burdens are attached to them.

Morality is suspecting other people of not being legally married.

Above all, we must avoid the pitfalls of tribalism. If we are divided among ourselves on tribal lines, we open our doors to foreign intervention and its potentially harmful consequences.

It is dangerous to be right in matters on which the established authorities are wrong.

There must be what Mr. Gladstone many years ago called a blessed act of oblivion. We must all turn our backs upon the horrors of the past. We must look to the future. We cannot afford to drag forward across the years that are to come the hatreds and revenges which have sprung from the injuries of the past.

Words are finite organs of the infinite mind. They cannot cover the dimensions of what is in truth. They break, chop, and impoverish it.

Loyalty is still the same, whether it win or lose the game; true as a dial to the sun, although it be not shined upon.

It is an interesting question how far men would retain their relative rank if they were divested of their clothes.

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

All Excess is ill: But Drunkenness is of the worst Sort. It spoils Health, dismounts the Mind, and unmans Men: It reveals Secrets, is Quarrelsome, Lascivious, Impudent, Dangerous and Mad. In fine, he that is drunk is not a Man: Because he is so long void of Reason, that distinguishes a Man from a Beast.

Nothing is more costly, nothing is more sterile, than vengeance.

Round numbers are always false.

The finest qualities of our nature, like the bloom on fruits, can be preserved only by the most delicate handling. Yet we do not treat ourselves nor one another thus tenderly.

There is nothing which at once affects a man so much and so little as his own death.

Our inventions are wont to be pretty toys, which distract our attention from serious things. They are but improved means to an unimproved end, We are in great haste to construct a magnetic telegraph from Maine to Texas; but Maine and Texas, it may be, have nothing important to communicate.

What we hope ever to do with ease, we must learn first to do with diligence.

Life is like playing a violin solo in public and learning the instrument as one goes on.