George Bernard Shaw

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.

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

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

Cruelty would be delicious if one could only find some sort of cruelty that didn’t really hurt.

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

Today is a king in disguise.

Believing that I was born for the service of mankind, and regarding the care of the commonwealth as a kind of common property which, like the air and the water, belongs to everybody, I set myself to consider in what way mankind might be best served, and what service I was myself best fitted by nature to perform.

There is nothing so unthinkable as thought, unless it be the entire absence of thought.

Fine manners need the support of fine manners in others.

Great abilities are not requisite for an Historian; for in historical composition, all the greatest powers of the human mind are quiescent. He has facts ready to his hand; so there is no exercise of invention. Imagination is not required in any degree; only about as much as is used in the lowest kinds of poetry. Some penetration, accuracy, and coloring, will fit a man for the task, if he can give the application which is necessary.

This is a fault common to all singers, that among their friends they will never sing when they are asked; unasked, they will never desist.

Imagination was given to man to compensate him for what he is not; a sense of humor to console him for what he is.

Do not bring people in your life who weigh you down. And trust your instincts … good relationships feel good. They feel right. They don’t hurt. They’re not painful. That’s not just with somebody you want to marry, but it’s with the friends that you choose. It’s with the people you surround yourselves with.

There is a hush over all Europe, nay, over all the world. Alas! it is the hush of suspense, and in many lands it is the hush of fear. Listen! No, listen carefully, I think I hear somethingyes, there it was quite clear. Dont you hear it? It is the tramp of armies crunching the gravel of the paradegrounds, splashing through rain-soaked fields, the tramp of two million German soldiers and more than a million Italiansgoing on maneuversyes, only on maneuvers!

I always like people who have developed long and hard, particularly through introspection and a lot of dedication. I think that what they arrive at is, usually, deeper and more beautiful than the person who seems to have that ability and fluidity from the beginning.

I have lived eighty years of life and know nothing for it, but to be resigned and tell myself that flies are born to be eaten by spiders and man to be devoured by sorrow.

Men are what their mothers made them.

Opinion has caused more trouble on this little earth than plagues or earthquakes.

The city is recruited from the country.

Our deeds still travel with us from afar, and what we have been makes us what we are.