George Bernard Shaw

Dying is a troublesome business: there is pain to be suffered, and it wrings one’s heart; but death is a splendid thing –a warfare accomplished, a beginning all over again, a triumph. You can always see that in their faces.

Youth is a wonderful thing. What a crime to waste it on children.

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

I have to live for others and not for myself: that’s middle-class morality.

A miracle is an event which creates faith. That is the purpose and nature of miracles. Frauds deceive. An event which creates faith does not deceive: therefore it is not a fraud, but a miracle.

The man who writes about himself and his own time is the only man who writes about all people and all time.

The power of love, as the basis of a State, has never been tried.

It is never too late to be what you might have been.

Europe extends to the Alleghenies; America lies beyond.

I would be loath to speak ill of any person who I do not know deserves it, but I am afraid he is an attorney.

Kindness is in our power, even when fondness is not.

If pleasure was not followed by pain, who would forbear it?

Beauty rests on necessities.

Surely life, if it be not long, is tedious, since we are forced to call in the assistance of so many trifles to rid us of our time, of that time which never can return.

Vanity is as ill at ease under indifference as tenderness is under a love which it cannot return.

These times of ours are serious and full of calamity, but all times are essentially alike. As soon as there is life there is danger.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

In taking revenge, a man is but even with his enemy; but in passing it over, he is superior.

A big leather-bound volume makes an ideal razor strap. A thin book is useful to stick under a table with a broken caster to steady it. A large, flat atlas can be used to cover a window with a broken pane. And a thick, old-fashioned heavy book with a clasp is the finest thing in the world to throw at a noisy cat.

Youth enters the world with very happy prejudices in her own favor. She imagines herself not only certain of accomplishing every adventure, but of obtaining those rewards which the accomplishment may deserve. She is not easily persuaded to believe that the force of merit can be resisted by obstinacy and avarice, or its luster darkened by envy and malignity.

The trouble ain’t that there is too many fools, but that the lightning ain’t distributed right.