George Bernard Shaw

Hell is paved with good intentions, not with bad ones. All men mean well.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.

First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity: no really self-respecting woman would take advantage of it.

This comes of James teaching me to think for myself, and never to hold back out of fear of what other people may think of me. It works beautifully as long as I think the same things as he does.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

All censorships exist to prevent anyone from challenging current conceptions and existing institutions. All progress is initiated by challenging current conceptions, and executed by supplanting existing institutions. Consequently the first condition of progress is the removal of censorships. There is the whole case against censorships in a nutshell.

It is not sufficient to see and to know the beauty of a work. We must feel and be affected by it.

Art is a jealous mistress; and if a man have a genius for painting, poetry, music, architecture or philosophy, he makes a bad husband and an ill provider.

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

Attention and respect give pleasure, however late, or however useless. But they are not useless, when they are late, it is reasonable to rejoice, as the day declines, to find that it has been spent with the approbation of mankind.

The years between fifty and seventy are the hardest. You are always being asked to do things, and yet you are not decrepit enough to turn them down.

…with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.

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

Cure the disease and kill the patient.

Raise your words, not your voice. It is rain that grows flowers, not thunder.

Find people who will make you better.

A country-bred man can always learn to get on with city people, but a town-bred fellah never gets the real hang of the country. You can put city polish on a man, but by golly, it seems you can’t ever rub it off him.

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

To see helpless infancy stretching out her hands, and pouring out her cries in testimony of dependence, without any powers to alarm jealousy, or any guilt to alienate affection, must surely awaken tenderness in every human mind; and tenderness once excited will be hourly increased by the natural contagion of felicity, by the repercussion of communicated pleasure, by the consciousness of dignity of benefaction.

God is better served in resisting a Temptation to Evil, than in many formal Prayers.

Knowledge is more than equivalent to force.