George Bernard Shaw

The seven deadly sins… food, clothing, firing, rent, taxes, respectability and children. Nothing can lift those seven millstones from Man’s neck but money; and the spirit cannot soar until the millstones are lifted.

…with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.

Without art, the crudeness of reality would make the world unbearable.

If you must hold yourself up to your children as an object lesson, hold yourself up as a warning and not an example.

Few of us have vitality enough to make any of our instincts imperious.

You see things; and you say Why? But I dream things that never were; and I say Why not?

That strong mother doesn’t tell her cub ‘Son, stay weak so the wolves can get you’. She says, ‘Toughen up, this is reality we are living in’.

Remember where you came from.

What if… everything you are going through is preparing you for what you asked for?

I mean why should somebody go steal and break the law to get all they can when there’s always some law where you can be legal and get it all anyway!

A man is what he thinks about all day long.

The highest compact we can make with our fellow is – Let there be truth between us two forevermore.

Traveling is a fool’s paradise. Our first journeys discover to us the indifference of places.

There was never a child so lovely but his mother was glad to get him to sleep.

Not one word, not one gesture of yours shall I, could I, ever forget…

I have a great deal of company in the house, especially in the morning when nobody calls.

A friend is a person with whom I may be sincere. Before him, I may think aloud.

We learn from experience that men never learn anything from experience.

Composition is, for the most part, an effort of slow diligence and steady perseverance, to which the mind is dragged by necessity or resolution, and from which the attention is every moment starting to more delightful amusements.

The presence of a noble nature, generous in its wishes, ardent in its charity, changes the lights for us: we begin to see things again in their larger, quieter masses, and to believe that we too can be seen and judged in the wholeness of our character.

It is proved…that things cannot be other than they are, for since everything was made for a purpose, it follows that everything is made for the best purpose.