George Bernard Shaw

You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

We want a few mad people now. See where the sane ones have landed us!

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.

Our words have wings, but fly not where we would.

Every one is a genius, more or less. No one is so physically sound that no part of him will be even a little unsound, and no one is so diseased but that some part of him will be healthy — so no man is so mentally and morally sound, but that he will be in part both mad and wicked; and no man is so mad and wicked but he will be sensible and honourable in part. In like manner there is no genius who is not also a fool, and no fool who is not also a genius.

Cities force growth and make people talkative and entertaining, but they also make them artificial.

Every old poem is sacred.

Intellect annuls fate. So far as a man thinks, he is free.

Courage can be contagious and hope can take on a life of its own.

If a thousand men were not to pay their tax-bills this year, that would not be a violent and bloody measure, as it would be to pay them, and enable the State to commit violence and shed innocent blood. This is, in fact, the definition of a peaceable revolution, if any such is possible.

If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer. Let him step to the music which he hears, however measured or far away.

The best effort of a fine person is felt after we have left their presence.

It is a strange desire, to seek power and lose liberty, or to seek power over others and to lose power over a man’s self. The rising unto place is laborious, and by pains men come to greater pains, and it is sometimes base; and by indignities men come to dignities. The standing is slippery, and the regress is either a downfall or at least an eclipse, which is a melancholy thing.

The secret of ugliness consists not in irregularity, but in being uninteresting.

Well, dinner would have been splendid!

The purpose of life is to live it, to taste experience to the utmost, to reach out eagerly and without fear for newer and richer experience.

The lofty pine is oftenest shaken by the winds; High towers fall with a heavier crash; And the lightning strikes the highest mountain.