George Bernard Shaw

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends on the unreasonable man.

If you can’t get rid of the skeleton in your closet, you’d best teach it to dance.

Don’t order any black things. Rejoice in his memory; and be radiant: leave grief to the children. Wear violet and purple. Be patient with the poor people who will snivel: they don’t know; and they think they will live for ever, which makes death a division instead of a bond.

Nothing is ever accomplished by a reasonable man.

The quality of strength lined with tenderness is an unbeatable combination, as are intelligence and necessity when unblunted by formal education.

It may be that we shall, by a process of sublime irony, have reached a stage in this story where safety will be the sturdy child of terror, and survival the twin brother of annihilation.

Beautiful credit! The foundation of modern society. Who shall say that this is not the golden age of mutual trust, of unlimited reliance upon human promises? That is a peculiar condition of society which enables a whole nation to instantly recognize point and meaning in the familiar newspaper anecdote, which puts into the mouth of a distinguished speculator in lands and mines this remark: – I wasn’t worth a cent two years ago, and now I owe two millions of dollars.

To do something, say something, see something, before anybody else – these are things that confer a pleasure compared with which other pleasures are tame and commonplace, other ecstasies cheap and trivial.

Don’t part with your illusions. When they are gone you may still exist, but you have ceased to live.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

We are inclined to believe those whom we don not know because they have never deceived us.

What makes life dreary is the want of a motive.

If you are good, life is good.

To strive with difficulties, and to conquer them, is the highest human felicity.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

Every man’s work, whether it be literature, or music or pictures or architecture or anything else, is always a portrait of himself.

If you are going through hell, keep going.

True genius resides in the capacity for evaluation of uncertain, hazardous, and conflicting information.

Love can often be misguided and do as much harm as good, but respect can do only good. It assumes that the other person’s stature is as large as one’s own, his rights as reasonable, his needs as important.