George Bernard Shaw

You can always tell an old soldier by the inside of his holsters and cartridge boxes. The young ones carry pistols and cartridges; the old ones, grub.

The best place to seek God is in a garden. You can dig for him there.

Old men are dangerous: it doesn’t matter to them what is going to happen to the world.

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.

If you cannot get rid of the family skeleton, you may as well make it dance.

The world is populated in the main by people who should not exist.

Work is always an antidote to depression.

All men make mistakes, but only wise men learn from their mistakes.

Friendships begin with liking or gratitude roots that can be pulled up.

The civilized man has built a coach, but has lost the use of his feet.

One farmer says to me, ‘You cannot live on vegetable food solely, for it furnishes nothing to make bones with;’ and so he religiously devotes a part of his day to supplying his system with the raw material of bones; walking all the while he talks behind his oxen, which, with vegetable-made bones, jerk him and his lumbering plow along in spite of every obstacle.

The drama’s laws, the drama’s patrons give, for we that live to please, must please to live.

The one who prosperity takes too much delight in will be the most shocked by reverses.

Money and time are the heaviest burdens of life, and the unhappiest of all mortals are those who have more of either than they know how to use.

I am an old man and have known a great many troubles, but most of them never happened.

We all really basically have a lot of magic … it’s only those of us that choose to accept it that really understand it.

Solvency is maintained by means of a national debt, on the principle, If you will not lend me the money, how can I pay you?

When you’ve told someone that you’ve left them a legacy the only decent thing to do is to die at once.

There is no character, howsoever good and fine, but it can be destroyed by ridicule, howsoever poor and witless. Observe the ass, for instance: his character is about perfect, he is the choicest spirit among all the humbler animals, yet see what ridicule has brought him to. Instead of feeling complimented when we are called an ass, we are left in doubt.

The whole history of the world is summed up in the fact that, when nations are strong, they are not always just, and when they wish to be just, they are no longer strong.

To the dull mind all nature is leaden. To the illumined mind the whole world burns and sparkles with light.