George Bernard Shaw Quotes - Page 2

Success covers a multitude of blunders.

I need not repeat familiar arguments about the waste of teachers' time, and the difficulties thrown in the way of English children trying to learn their own language; or the fact that nobody without a visual memory for words ever succeeds in spelling conventionally, however highly educated he or she may be.

Patriotism is your conviction that this country is superior to all other countries because you were born in it.

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.

People are always blaming their circumstances for what they are. I don't believe in circumstances. 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.

The primitive idea of justice is partly legalized revenge and partly expiation by sacrifice. It works out from both sides in the notion that two blacks make a white, and that when a wrong has been done, it should be paid for by an equivalent suffering. It seems to the Philistine majority a matter of course that this compensating suffering should be inflicted on the wrongdoer for the sake of its deterrent effect on other would-be wrongdoers; but a moment's reflection will shew that this utilitarian application corrupts the whole transaction. For example, the shedding of blood cannot be balanced by the shedding of guilty blood. Sacrificing a criminal to propitiate God for the murder of one of his righteous servants is like sacrificing a mangy sheep or an ox with the rinderpest: it calls down divine wrath instead of appeasing it. In doing it we offer God as a sacrifice the gratification of our own revenge and the protection of our own lives without cost to ourselves; and cost to ourselves is the essence of sacrifice and expiation.

I often quote myself. It adds spice to my conversation.

Silence is the most perfect expression of scorn.

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

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....

If we women were particular about men's characters, we should never get married at all.

When a man wants to murder a tiger he calls it sport: wlien the tiger wants to murder him he calls it ferocity.

Common sense is instinct. Enough of it is genius.

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

Doing what needs to be done may not make you happy, but it will make you great.

Patriotism is, fundamentally, a conviction that a particular country is the best in the world because you were born in it....

Do you think that the things people make fools of themselves about are any less real and true than the things they behave sensibly about? They are more true: they are the only things that are true.

The quality of a play is the quality of its ideas.

My only policy is to profess evil and do good.

People see a Macbeth film. They imagine they have seen Macbeth, and don't want to see it again; so when your Mr. Hackett or somebody comes round to act the play, he finds the house empty. That is what has happened to dozens of good plays whose authors have allowed them to be filmed. It shall not happen to mine if I can help it.

The whole world is strewn with snares traps gins and pitfalls for the capture of men by women.

The golden rule is that there are no golden rules.

The heart of an Irishman is nothing but his imagination

A life spent making mistakes is not only more honorable, but more useful than a life spent doing nothing.

The play was a great success, but audience was a dismal failure.

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.

HIGGINS. The great secret, Eliza, is not having bad manners or good manners or any other particular sort of manners, but having the same manner for all human souls: in short, behaving as if were in Heaven, where there are no third-class carriages, and one soul is as good as another.

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

Youth is wasted on the young.

Morality is not respectability.

And if I am further pressed to declare straightforwardly whether I mean to disparage these authorities [who criticize Ibsen], I reply, pointedly, that I do. I affirm that such criticisms are written by men who know as much of political life as I know of navigation. (P. 56)

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

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

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

The secret of forgiving everything is to understand nothing.

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

I finished my first book seventy-six years ago. I offered it to every publisher on the English-speaking earth I had ever heard of. Their refusals were unanimous: and it did not get into print until, fifty years later; publishers would publish anything that had my name on it.

The fact that a believer is happier than a skeptic is no more to the point than the fact that a drunken man is happier than a sober one. The happiness of credulity is a cheap and dangerous quality of happiness, and by no means a necessity of life.

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

The thought of two thousand people crunching celery at the same time horrified me.

The weak may not be admired and hero-worshipped; but they are by no means disliked or shunned; and they never seem to have the least difficulty in marrying people who are too good for them. They may fail in emergencies; but life is not one long emergency: it is mostly a string of situations for which no exceptional strength is needed, and with which even rather weak people can cope if they have a stronger partner to help them out.

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

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

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

The solid earth sways like the treacherous sea beneath the feet of men and spirits alike when the innocent are slain in the name of law, and their wrongs are undone by slandering the pure of heart.

CHARTERIS [unfolding his arms in terror] No, please. Dont. As a philosopher, it’s my business to tell other people the truth; but it’s not their business to tell it to me. I dont like it: it hurts.

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

Nobody could stand an eternity of Heaven.

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

Make it a rule never to give a child a book you would not read yourself.

What man really wishes to do he will find a means of doing.

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

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

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

The word morality, if we met it in the Bible, would surprise us as much as the word telephone or motor car.

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.

While browsing in a second-hand bookshop one day, George Bernard Shaw was amused to find a copy of one of his own works which he himself had inscribed for a friend: "To ----, with esteem, George Bernard Shaw."He immediately purchased the book and returned it to the friend with a second inscription: "With renewed esteem, George Bernard Shaw.

I know your head aches. I know you're tired. I know your nerves are as raw as meat in a butcher's window. But think what you're trying to accomplish - just think what you're dealing with. The majesty and grandeur of the English language; it's the greatest possession we have. The noblest thoughts that ever flowed through the hearts of men are contained in its extraordinary, imaginative and musical mixtures of sounds. And that's what you've set yourself out to conquer, Eliza. And conquer it you will.

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

No man fully capable of his own language ever masters another.