George Bernard Shaw

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

Better see rightly on a pound a week than squint on a million.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

What use are cartridges in battle? I always carry chocolate instead.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

I have protracted my work till most of those whom I wished to please have sunk into the grave, and success and miscarriage are empty sounds: I therefore dismiss it with frigid tranquillity, having little to fear or hope from censure or from praise.

The only things one can admire at length are those one admires without knowing why.

Virtue knows that it is impossible to get on without compromise, and tunes herself, as it were, a trifle sharp to allow for an inevitable fall in playing.

Count on it, if a person talks of their misfortune, there is something in it that is not disagreeable to them.

A wise man will make more opportunities than he finds.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentlemen, he may pronounce as he pleases.

My emancipation don’t fit your equation.

Great works are performed not by strength, but by perseverance.

Was there ever such an autumn? And yet there was never such a panic and hard times in the commercial world. The merchants and banks are suspending and failing all the country over, but not the sandbanks, solid and warm, and streaked with bloody blackberry vines.You may run upon them as much as you please – even as the crickets do, and find their account in it. They are the stockholders in these banks, and I hear them creaking their content.

Discern of the coming on of years, and think not to do the same things still; for age will not be defied.

What makes all doctrines plain and clear? About two hundred pounds a year. And that which was proved true before, prove false again? Two hundred more.

A weed is a plant whose virtues have not yet been discovered.

It is better to light a single candle than to curse the darkness.

The future is purchased by the present.

Lest I keep my complacent way I must remember somewhere out there a person died for me today. As long as there must be war, I ask and I must answer was I worth dying for?