George Bernard Shaw

When a stupid man is doing something he is ashamed of, he always declares that it is his duty.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

Man is the only animal which esteems itself rich in proportion to the number and voracity of its parasites.

Both optimists and pessimists contribute to society. The optimist invents the airplane, the pessimist the parachute.

A lifetime of happiness? No man alive could bear it; it would be hell on earth.

There is only one universal passion fear.

Evil is like water, it abounds, is cheap, soon fouls, but runs itself clear of taint.

True silence is the rest of the mind; it is to the spirit what sleep is to the body, nourishment and refreshment.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

The poets aim is either to profit or to please, or to blend in one the delightful and the useful. Whatever the lesson you would convey, be brief, that your hearers may catch quickly what is said and faithfully retain it. Every superfluous word is spilled from the too-full memory.

Resolve not to be poor: whatever you have, spend less. Poverty is a great enemy to human happiness; it certainly destroys liberty, and it makes some virtues impracticable, and others extremely difficult.

All diseases run into one, old age.

Our lives begin to end the day we become silent about things that matter.

A man’s growth is seen in the successive choirs of his friends.

Where women love each other, men learn to smother their mutual dislike.

God’s first creature, which was light.

I will not say do not weep, for not all tears are evil.

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

The subtlety of nature is greater many times over than the subtlety of the senses and understanding.

Pasteboard pies and paper flowers are being banished from the stage by the growth of that power of accurate observation which is commonly called cynicism by those who have not got it….

The intuitive recognition of the instant, thus reality… is the highest act of wisdom.