George Bernard Shaw Quotes

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413 Quotes Unveiling the Wit and Wisdom of a Brilliant Mind

“Silence is the perfect expression of scorn.”

“Life is no brief candle to me. It is a sort of splendid torch which I have got a hold of for the moment, and I want to make it burn as brightly as possible before handing it on to future generations.”

“In heaven an angel is no one in particular.”

“When you loved me I gave you the whole sun and stars to play with. I gave you eternity in a single moment, strength of the mountains in one clasp of your arms, and the volume of all the seas in one impulse of your soul.”

“The difference between a lady and a flower girl is not how she behaves, but how she’s treated.”

“No public man in these islands ever believes that the Bible means what it says: he is always convinced that it says what he means.”

“Choose silence of all virtues, for by it you hear other men's imperfections, and conceal your own.”

“While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered beasts, how can we expect any ideal conditions on this earth?”

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

“Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman. Believing what he read made him mad.”

“I'm not a teacher: only a fellow traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead - ahead of myself as well as you.”

“If you can’t appreciate what you’ve got, you’d better get what you can appreciate.”

“Do not waste your time on Social Questions. What is the matter with the poor is Poverty what is the matter with the rich is Uselessness.”

“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…”

“I choose not to make a graveyard of my body for the rotting corpses of dead animals.”

“First love is only a little foolishness and a lot of curiosity.”

“I never resist temptation because I have found that things that are bad for me do not tempt me.”

“I have defined the 100 per cent American as 99 per cent an idiot.”

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

“A gentleman is one who puts more into the world than he takes out.”

“Imitation is not just the sincerest form of flattery - it's the sincerest form of learning.”

“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.”

“Democracy is a device that ensures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.”

“If any religion had a chance of ruling over England, nay Europe within the next hundred years, it could be Islam.”

“My main reason for adopting literature as a profession was that, as the author is never seen by his clients, he need not dress respectably.”

“Only in books has mankind known perfect truth, love and beauty.”

“It is dangerous to be sincere unless you are also stupid.”

“It is a curious sensation: the sort of pain that goes mercifully beyond our powers of feeling. When your heart is broken, your boats are burned: nothing matters any more. It is the end of happiness and the beginning of peace.”

“The longer I live, the more I realize that I am never wrong about anything, and that all the pains I have so humbly taken to verify my notions have only wasted my time!”

“There is always danger for those who are afraid.”

“We are made wise not by the recollection of our past, but by the responsibility for our future.”

“I knew if I waited around long enough something like this would happen.”

“To be in hell is to drift; to be in heaven is to steer.”

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

“The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination”

“The confusion of marriage with morality has done more to destroy the conscience of the human race than any other single error.”

“The plain working truth is that it is not only good for people to be shocked occasionally, but absolutely necessary to the progress of society that they should be shocked pretty often.”

“I do not know what I think until I write it.”

“A man of my spiritual intensity does not eat corpses.”

“Forgive him, for he believes that the customs of his tribe are the laws of nature!”

“I sold flowers. I didn't sell myself. Now you've made a lady of me I'm not fit to sell anything else.”

“Take care to get what you like or you will be forced to like what you get.”

“There is only one religion, though there are a hundred versions of it.”

“A miracle, my friend, is an event which creates faith.”

“Independence? That's middle-class blasphemy. We are all dependent on one another, every soul of us on earth.”

“The more I see of the moneyed classes, the more I understand the guillotine.”

“You are going to let the fear of poverty govern your life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.”

“Get out of my way; for I won't stop for you.”

“I can't turn your soul on. Leave me those feelings; and you can take away the voice and the face. They are not you.”