George Bernard Shaw

Hegel was right when he said that we learn from history that man can never learn anything from history.

It’s so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

We know there is intention and purpose in the universe, because there is intention and purpose in us.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

The only way for a woman to provide for herself decently is for her to be good to some man that can afford to be good to her.

Very few people can afford to be poor.

Every being is in search of truth, but small fears go on preventing you.

The joy in life is to be used for a purpose. I want to be used up when I die.

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.

Our greatest glory is not in never failing, but in rising up every time we fail.

Bad times have a scientific value. These are occasions a good learner would not miss.

A good indignation brings out all one’s powers.

It doesn’t matter that your dream came true if you spent your whole life sleeping.

That is the whole secret of successful fighting. Get your enemy at a disadvantage; and never, on any account, fight him on equal terms.

The silence that accepts merit as the most natural thing in the world is the highest applause.

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

Technique is noticed most markedly in the case of those who have not mastered it.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

The trouble with the world is not that people know too little, but that they know so many things that ain’t so.

There is nothing in the world like a persuasive speech to fuddle the mental apparatus.

One thing only I know, and that is that I know nothing.