George Bernard Shaw: Quotes about life

George Bernard Shaw was Irish playwright. Explore interesting quotes on life.

George Bernard Shaw: 826 quotes39 likes

“Geniuses are horrid, intolerant, easily offended, sleeplessly self-conscious men, who expect their wives to be angels with no further business in life than to pet and worship their husbands. Even at the best they are not comfortable men to live with; and a perfect husband is one who is perfectly comfortable to live with.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“They have accepted the burden of eternal life. They have taken the agony from birth; and their life does not fail them even in the hour of their destruction.”

George Bernard Shaw

Lilith, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

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

George Bernard Shaw You Never Can Tell

You Never Can Tell, Act II
1890s

“Perhaps woman's art is of woman's life a thing apart, 'tis man's whole existence; just as love is said to be the reverse — though it isn't.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Love Among the Artists (1900)

“Economy is the art of making the most of life. The love of economy is the root of all virtue.”

George Bernard Shaw

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. 235

“Women upset everything. When you let them into your life, you find that the woman is driving at one thing and you're driving at another.”

George Bernard Shaw

Act II
1910s, Pygmalion (1912)

“Cusins: Call you poverty a crime?
Undershaft: The worst of crimes. All the other crimes are virtues beside it: all the other dishonors are chivalry itself by comparison. Poverty blights whole cities; spreads horrible pestilences; strikes dead the very souls of all who come within sight, sound or smell of it. What you call crime is nothing: a murder here and a theft there, a blow now and a curse then: what do they matter? they are only the accidents and illnesses of life: there are not fifty genuine professional criminals in London. But there are millions of poor people, abject people, dirty people, ill fed, ill clothed people. They poison us morally and physically: they kill the happiness of society: they force us to do away with our own liberties and to organize unnatural cruelties for fear they should rise against us and drag us down into their abyss. Only fools fear crime: we all fear poverty.”

George Bernard Shaw

1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

“Love is a simple thing and a deep thing: it is an act of life and not an illusion. Art is an illusion.”

George Bernard Shaw

Acis, in Pt. V
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“Women are not angels. They are as foolish as men in many ways; but they have had to devote themselves to life whilst men have had to devote themselves to death; and that makes a vital difference in male and female religion. Women have been forced to fear whilst men have been forced to dare: the heroism of a woman is to nurse and protect life, and of a man to destroy it and court death.”

George Bernard Shaw book The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism

The Intelligent Woman's Guide to Socialism and Capitalism, Chapter 82 http://books.google.com/books?id=ys13gZliXFAC (1928) <br class="br">1920s

“Life must not cease. That comes before everything. It is silly to say you do not care. You do care. It is that care that will prompt your imagination; inflame your desires; make your will irresistible; and create out of nothing.”

George Bernard Shaw

The Serpent, in Pt. I, Act I
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“Society, with all its prisons and bayonets and whips and ostracisms and starvations, is powerless in the face of the Anarchist who is prepared to sacrifice his own life in the battle with it. Our natural safety from the cheap and devastating explosives which every Russian student can make … lies in the fact that brave and resolute men, when they are rascals, will not risk their skins for the good of humanity, and, when they are sympathetic enough to care for humanity, abhor murder, and never commit it until their consciences are outraged beyond endurance. The remedy is, then, simply not to outrage their consciences.”

George Bernard Shaw

Preface
1900s, Major Barbara (1905)

“You can feel nothing but a torment, and believe nothing but a lie. You will not raise your head to look at all the miracles of life that surround you; but you will run ten miles to see a fight or a death.”

George Bernard Shaw

Eve to Cain, in Pt. I, Act II
1920s, Back to Methuselah (1921)

“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; the being a force of Nature instead of a feverish selfish little clod of ailments and grievances complaining that the world will not devote itself to making you happy.”

George Bernard Shaw

Source: 1900s, Man and Superman (1903), p. xxxi