George Bernard Shaw Quotes and Quotations

My opportunities were still there, nay, they multiplied tenfold; but the strength and youth to cope with them began to fail, and to need eking out with the shifty cunning of experience.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

The test of a man or woman's breeding is how they behave in a quarrel.

I am a Millionaire. That is my religion.

All professions are a conspiracy against the country.

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

She had lost the art of conversation, but not, unfortunately, the power of speech.

You don't learn to hold your own in the world by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

The faults of the burglar are the qualities of the financier.

It is easy - terribly easy - to shake a man's faith in himself. To take advantage of that, to break a man's spirit is devil's work.

In Heaven an angel is nobody in particular.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

You can lose a man like that by your own death, but not by his.

I am only a beer teetotaller, not a champagne teetotaller.

It is impossible for an Englishman to open his mouth without making some other Englishman despise him.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

An Englishman thinks he is moral when he is only uncomfortable.

Everything happens to everybody sooner or later if there is time enough.

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Martyrdom is the only way a man can become famous without ability.

Fashions, after all, are only induced epidemics.

There is no love sincerer than the love of food.

What is life but a series of inspired follies? The difficulty is to find them to do.

Beware of the man whose God is in the skies.

My only policy is to profess evil and do good.

A government which robs Peter to pay Paul can always depend on the support of Paul.

The art of government is the organization of idolatry.

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

Hatred is the coward's revenge for being intimidated.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Martyrdom - the only way in which a man can become famous without ability.

The savage bows down to idols of wood and stone, the civilized man to idols of flesh and blood.

The great advantage of a hotel is that it's a refuge from home life.

The worst sin towards our fellow creatures is not to hate them, but to be indifferent to them; that's the essence of inhumanity.

I was taught when I was young that if people would only love one another, all would be well with the world. This seemed simple and very nice; but I found when I tried to put it in practice not only that other people were seldom lovable, but that I was not very lovable myself.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of Hell.

Liberty means responsibility. That is why most men dread it.

This is the true joy in life, the being used for a purpose recognized by yourself as a mighty one; the being thoroughly worn out before you are thrown on the scrap heap.

Love is a gross exaggeration of the difference between one person and everybody else.

You don't learn to hold your own by standing on guard, but by attacking, and getting well hammered yourself.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worthwhile.

Reminiscences make one feel so deliciously aged and sad.

One man who has a mind and knows it can always beat ten men who haven't and don't.

An election is a moral horror, as bad as a battle except for the blood; a mud bath for every soul concerned in it.

Morality is not respectability.

From Mozart I learnt to say important things in a conversational way.

Our laws make law impossible; our liberties destroy all freedom; our property is organized robbery; our morality an impudent hypocrisy; our wisdom is administered by inexperienced or mal-experienced dupes; our power wielded by cowards and weaklings; and our honour false in all its points. I am an enemy of the existing order for good reasons.

Parentage is a very important profession, but no test of fitness, for it is ever imposed in the interests of the Children.

The best brought-up children are those who have seen their parents as they are. Hypocrisy is not the parents' first duty.

The philosopher is Nature's pilot - and there you have our difference; to be in hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

He knows nothing; he thinks he knows everything - that clearly points to a political career.

Modern poverty is not the poverty that was blest in the Sermon on the Mount.

What really flatters a man is that you think him worth flattery.

A great devotee of the gospel of getting on.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself. Therefore all progress depends upon the unreasonable man.

Reformers have the idea that change can be achieved by brute sanity.

Religion is a great force - the only real motive force in the world; but you must get at a man through his own religion, not through yours.

Christianity might be a good thing if anyone ever tried it.

I believe in the discipline of silence and could talk for hours about it.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

If the announcer can produce the impression that he is a gentleman, he may pronounce as he pleases.

He who can does. He who can't, teaches.

I dislike feeling at home when I am abroad.

England and America are two countries separated by the same language.

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not. The cure for it is occupation.

I work as my father drank.

When I was a young man I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. I didn't want to be a failure, so I did ten times more work.

Never believe anything a writer tells you about himself. A man comes to believe in the end the lies he tells himself about himself.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

It's all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

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

Happiness and beauty are by-products. Folly is the direct pursuit of happiness and beauty.

The only way to avoid being miserable is not to have enough leisure to wonder whether you are happy or not.

This is true joy of life-being used for a purpose that is recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... instead of being a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

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

The secret of being miserable is to have leisure to bother about whether you are happy or not.

The reasonable man adapts himself to the world; the unreasonable one persists in trying to adapt the world to himself.

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

The man with a toothache thinks everyone happy whose teeth are sound. The poverty-stricken man makes the same mistake about the rich man.

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

The only service a friend can really render is to keep up your courage by holding up to you a mirror in which you can see a noble image of yourself.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

Self-control is the quality that distinguishes the fittest to survive.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. The people who get on in this world are they who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

The people who get on in this world are the people who get up and look for the circumstances they want, and, if they can't find them, make them.

A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman.

A day's work is a day's work, neither more nor less, and the man who does it needs a day's sustenance, a night's repose and due leisure, whether he be painter or ploughman.

Peace is not only better than war, but infinitely more arduous.

When people shake their heads because we are living in a restless age, ask them how they would like to life in a stationary one, and do without change.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Progress is impossible without change, and those who cannot change their minds cannot change anything.

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

If you go to heaven without being naturally qualified for it, you will not enjoy it there.

As long as I have a want, I have a reason for living. Satisfaction is death.

This is true joy of life-the being used for a purpose that is recognized by yourself as a right one, instead of being a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Use your health, even to the point of wearing it out. That is what it is for. Spend all you have before you die; do not outlive yourself.

This is true joy of life-being used for a purpose that is recognized by yourself as a mighty one ... instead of being a feverish, selfish little clod of ailments and grievances, complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he'll never stop to trouble about whether he's happy or not.

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George Bernard Shaw - Famous Quotes and Authors