George Bernard Shaw

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

When a man says money can do anything, that settles it: he hasn’t got any.

Life is a disease; and the only difference between one man and another is the stage of the disease at which he lives. You are always at the crisis: I am always in the convalescent stage.

I believe in Michelangelo, Velasquez, and Rembrandt; in the might of design, the mystery of color, the redemption of all things by Beauty everlasting, and the message of Art that has made these hands blessed. Amen. Amen.

Put an Irishman on the spit and you can always get another Irishman to turn him.

We have no more right to consume happiness without producing it than to consume wealth without producing it.

If you live for people’s acceptance, you’ll die from their rejections.

Sir, that all who are happy, are equally happy, is not true. A peasant and a philosopher may be equally satisfied, but not equally happy. Happiness consists in the multiplicity of agreeable consciousness.

The ornament of a house is the friends who frequent it.

Don’t be afraid. Be focused. Be determined. Be hopeful. Be empowered.

God hangs the greatest weights upon the smallest wires.

Death is but crossing the world, as friends do the seas; they live in one another still. For they must needs be present, that love and live in that which is omnipresent. In this divine glass, they see face to face; and their converse is free as well as pure. This is the comfort of friends, that though they may be said to die, yet their friendship and society are, in the best sense, ever present, because immortal.

The State must follow, and not lead, the character and progress of the citizen.

How vain it is to sit down to write when you have not stood up to live.

Beauty is a short-lived tyranny.

Iteration, like friction, is likely to generate heat instead of progress.

What you do makes a difference. And you have to decide what kind of difference you want to make.

The right merchant is one who has the just average of faculties we call common sense; a man of a strong affinity for facts, who makes up his decision on what he has seen. He is thoroughly persuaded of the truths of arithmetic. There is always a reason, in the man, for his good or bad fortune in making money. Men talk as if there were some magic about this. He knows that all goes on the old road, pound for pound, cent for cent – for every effect a perfect cause – and that good luck is another name for tenacity of purpose.

There is no satisfaction in hanging a man who does not object to it.

When it comes to the story of my heart, I am the villain, locking it away; denying its right be free. The chains are tight, restricting its growth; long enough to see through the window of opportunity, but the only escape it has, is via the pen. Why do I deny myself the opportunities? I know it comes from a place of protection, but also of fear. I think my heart has grown a resentment because of this betrayal, and has decided, enough is enough.

Why should we be in such desperate haste to succeed, and in such desperate enterprises? If a man does not keep pace with his companions, perhaps it is because he hears a different drummer.