George Bernard Shaw

You have set up in New York Harbor a monstrous idol which you call Liberty. The only thing that remains to complete that monument is to put on its pedestal the inscription written by Dante on the gate of hell: All hope abandon ye who enter here.

My way of joking is to tell the truth. It’s the funniest joke in the world.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport; when a tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

The great danger of conversion in all ages has been that when the religion of the high mind is offered to the lower mind, the lower mind, feeling its fascination without understanding it, and being incapable of rising to it, drags it down to its level by degrading it.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Even the youngest of us may be wrong sometimes.

Unless you try to do something beyond what you have already mastered, you will never grow.

We need the tonic of wildness…At the same time that we are earnest to explore and learn all things, we require that all things be mysterious and unexplorable, that land and sea be indefinitely wild, unsurveyed and unfathomed by us because unfathomable. We can never have enough of nature.

How could a man be satisfied with a decision between such alternatives and under such circumstances? No more than he can be satisfied with his hat, which he’s chosen from among such shapes as the resources of the age offer him, wearing it at best with a resignation which is chiefly supported by comparison.

Through our own recovered innocence we discern the innocence of our neighbors.

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

I would rather sit on a pumpkin and have it all to myself, than be crowded on a velvet cushion.

Pictures and shapes are but secondary objects and please or displease only in the memory.

The line of beauty is the line of perfect economy.

Belief like any other moving body follows the path of least resistance.

We acquire the strength we have overcome.

I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

The vanity of being known to be trusted with a secret is generally one of the chief motives to disclose it.

When you adopt the standards and the values of someone else… you surrender your own integrity. You become, to the extent of your surrender, less of a human being.

Many people will walk in and out of your life, but only true friends will leave footprints in your heart.

There is only one good – knowledge; and only one evil – ignorance.