George Bernard Shaw

I dread success. To have succeeded is to have finished one’s business on earth, like the male spider, who is killed by the female the moment he has succeeded in his courtship. I like a state of continual becoming, with a goal in front and not behind.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

Imagination is the beginning of creation. You imagine what you desire, you will what you imagine and at last you create what you will.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Life would be tolerable but for its amusements.

An index is a great leveller.

Let us eat and drink neither forgetting death unduly nor remembering it. The Lord hath mercy on whom he will have mercy, etc., and the less we think about it the better.

We need to do a better job of putting ourselves higher on our own ‘to do’ list.

He who would begun has half done. Dare to be wise; begin.

I was afraid that by observing objects with my eyes and trying to comprehend them with each of my other senses I might blind my soul altogether.

For everything you have missed, you have gained something else; and for everything you gain, you lose something else.

Whenever, therefore, people are deceived and form opinions wide of the truth, it is clear that the error has slid into their minds through the medium of certain resemblances to that truth.

Tyrants have always some slight shade of virtue; they support the laws before destroying them.

Gazing to the south, from the eastern peak, the moon appears through the raindrops.

Self-denial is not a virtue, it is only the effect of prudence on rascality.

A life is not important except in the impact it has on other lives.

The perch swallows the grub-worm, the pickerel swallows the perch, and the fisherman swallows the pickerel; and so all the chinks in the scale of being are filled.

You can’t depend on your eyes when your imagination is out of focus.

Life loves to be taken by the lapel and told: “I’m with you kid. Let’s go.”

If you aren’t fired with enthusiasm, you will be fired with enthusiasm.

Raphael paints wisdom; Handel sings it, Phidias carves it, Shakespeare writes it, Wren builds it, Columbus sails it, Luther preaches it, Washington arms it, Watt mechanizes it.