George Bernard Shaw

The doctor learns that if he gets ahead of the superstitions of his patients he is a ruined man; and the result is that he instinctively takes care not to get ahead of them.

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

Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.

In literature the ambition of the novice is to acquire the literary language: the struggle of the adept is to get rid of it.

Our necessities are few, but our wants are endless.

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.

When I was a boy of 14, my father was so ignorant I could hardly stand to have the old man around. But when I got to be 21, I was astonished at how much the old man had learned in seven years.

In every work of genius we recognize our own rejected thoughts; they come back to us with a certain alienated majesty.

I at least have so much to do in unraveling certain human lots, and seeing how they were woven and interwoven, that all the light I can command must be concentrated on this particular web, and not dispersed over that tempting range of relevancies called the universe.

Seek ye first the good things of the mind, and the rest will either be supplied or its loss will not be felt.

The savage in man is never quite eradicated.

Alcohol is the anesthesia by which we endure the operation of life.

I am very fond of truth, but not at all of martyrdom.

Sculpture and painting have the effect of teaching us manners and abolishing hurry.

Is not every man sometimes a radical in politics? Men are conservatives when they are least vigorous, or when they are most luxurious. They are conservatives after dinner, or before taking their rest; when they are sick, or aged. In the morning, or when their intellect or their conscience has been aroused; when they hear music, or when they read poetry, they are radicals.

Life levels all men. Death reveals the eminent.

You must often make erasures if you mean to write what is worthy of being read a second time; and don’t labor for the admiration of the crowd, but be content with a few choice readers.

Nature, to be commanded, must be obeyed.

The trees are about to show us how lovely it is to let things go.

To be idle and to be poor have always been reproaches, and therefore every man endeavors with his utmost care to hide his poverty from others, and his idleness from himself.

You cannot have power for good without having power for evil too. Even mother’s milk nourishes murderers as well as heroes.