George Bernard Shaw

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.

In order to fully realize how bad a popular play can be, it is necessary to see it twice.

A man’s interest in the world is only an overflow from his interest in himself.

We have not lost faith, but we have transferred it from God to the medical profession.

Gambling promises the poor what property performs for the rich, something for nothing.

A man who has no office to go to – I don’t care who he is – is a trial of which you can have no conception.

Farmers are respectable and interesting to me in proportion as they are poor.

More helpful than all wisdom is one draught of simple human pity that will not forsake us.

Wonder is the beginning of wisdom.

A wise man does not waste so good a commodity as lying for naught.

None are so old as those who have outlived enthusiasm

Is not disease the rule of existence? There is not a lily pad floating on the river but has been riddled by insects. Almost every shrub and tree has its gall, oftentimes esteemed its chief ornament and hardly to be distinguished from the fruit. If misery loves company, misery has company enough. Now, at midsummer, find me a perfect leaf or fruit.

Power does not corrupt men; fools, however, if they get into a position of power, corrupt power.

I suppose every old scholar has had the experience of reading something in a book which was significant to him, but which he could never find again. Sure he is that he read it there, but no one else ever read it, nor can he find it again, though he buy the book and ransack every page.

We shall see but a little way if we require to understand what we see.

When you’ve worked hard, and done well, and walked through that doorway of opportunity, you do not slam it shut behind you. You reach back, and you give other folks the same chances that helped you succeed.

I say beware of all enterprises that require new clothes, and not rather a new wearer of clothes.

What is once well done is done forever.

If I have said something to hurt a man once, I shall not get the better of this by saying many things to please him.

Pity is for living, envy is for dead.

The virtues of society are vices of the saint. The terror of reform is the discovery that we must cast away our virtues, or what we have always esteemed such, into the same pit that has consumed our grosser vices.