George Bernard Shaw

Englishmen hate Liberty and Equality too much to understand them. But every Englishman loves a pedigree.

No man ever believes that the Bible means what it says: He is always convinced that it says what he means.

I can forgive Alfred Nobel for having invented dynamite, but only a fiend in human form could have invented the Nobel Prize.

The best place to find God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

Democracy substitutes election by the incompetent many for appointment by the corrupt few.

I never worry about action, but only inaction.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent – for every effect a perfect cause – and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

Love must be as much a light, as it is a flame.

The years as they pass plunder us of one thing after another.

Labor diligently to increase your property.

If the single man plant himself indomitably on his instincts, and there abide, the huge world will come round to him.

Drunkenness spoils health, dismounts the mind, and unmans man. It reveals secrets, is quarrelsome, lascivious, impudent, dangerous, and mad.

Let us not look east and west for materials of conversation, but rest in presence and unity. A just feeling will fast enough supply fuel for discourse, if speaking be more grateful than silence. When people come to see us, we foolishly prattle, lest we be inhospitable. But things said for conversation are chalk eggs. Don’t say things. What you are stands over you the while, and thunders so that I cannot hear what you say to the contrary. A lady of my acquaintance said, I don’t care so much for what they say as I do for what makes them say it.

What lies behind you and what lies in front of you, pales in comparison to what lies inside of you.

In human intercourse the tragedy begins, not when there is misunderstanding about words, but when silence is not understood.

Only that day dawns to which we are awake.

The first condition of progress is the removal of censorship.

Death then, being the way and condition of life, we cannot love to live if we cannot bear to die.

What is once well done is done forever.

The true poem is the poet’s mind.