George Bernard Shaw

Home life is no more natural to us than a cage is natural to a cockatoo.

Baseball has the great advantage over cricket of being sooner ended.

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.

I was a freethinker before I knew how to think.

The only secrets are the secrets that keep themselves.

Men are not governed by justice, but by law or persuasion. When they refuse to be governed by law or persuasion, they have to be governed by force or fraud, or both.

If you learn to practice love, compassion, joy, and equanimity, you will know how to heal the illnesses of anger, sorrow, insecurity, sadness, hatred, loneliness, and unhealthy attachments.

Choose the life that is most useful, and habit will make it the most agreeable.

You have such strong words at command, that they make the smallest argument seem formidable.

The beginning of compunction is the beginning of a new life.

Whatever games are played with us, we must play no games with ourselves, but deal in our privacy with the last honesty and truth.

Almost any man knows how to earn money, but not one in a million knows how to spend it.

If you strike a child, take care that you strike it in anger, even at the risk of maiming it for life. A blow in cold blood neither can nor should be forgiven.

Life is a quarry, out of which we are to mold and chisel and complete a character.

Though wisdom cannot be gotten for gold, still less can be gotten without it.

The finest workers in stone are not copper or steel tools, but the gentle touches of air and water working at their leisure with a liberal allowance of time.

Nature has made up her mind that what cannot defend itself shall not be defended.

We are happier in many ways when we are old than when we were young. The young sow wild oats. The old grow sage.

Private men, in fine, are so much their own, that, paying common dues, they are sovereigns of all the rest. Yet the public must and will be served; and they that do it well, deserve public marks of honour and respect. To do so, men must have public minds, as well as salaries; or they will serve private ends at the public cost. Government can never be well administered, but where those intrusted make conscience of well discharging their places.

There is in the act of preparing, the moment you start caring.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.