George Bernard Shaw

Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men’s imperfections, and conceal your own.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

Common people do not pray; they only beg.

Syllables govern the world.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

My reputation grows with every failure.

It’s so simple to be wise. Just think of something stupid to say and then don’t say it.

We seem but to linger in manhood to tell the dreams of our childhood, and they vanish out of memory ere we learn the language.

If you can’t forgive and forget, pick one.

Goodness is the only investment which never fails.

But human experience is usually paradoxical, that means incongruous with the phrases of current talk or even current philosophy.

It is natural to die as to be born.

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

At seventy-seven it is time to be in earnest.

If your determination is fixed, I do not counsel you to despair. Few things are impossible to diligence and skill. Great works are performed not by strength, but perseverance.

An empire is an immense egotism.

Indeed, history is nothing more than a tableau of crimes and misfortunes.

Condense some daily experience into a glowing symbol and an audience is electrified.

You should read history and look at ostracism, persecution, martyrdom, and that kind of thing. They always happen to the best men, you know.

I had three chairs in my house; one for solitude, two for friendship, three for society.

I must walk toward Oregon, and not toward Europe. And that way the nation is moving, and I may say that mankind progress from east to west. We go eastward to realize history and study the works of art and literature, retracing the steps of the race; we go westward as into the future, with a spirit of enterprise and adventure.