George Bernard Shaw

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

When two people are under the influence of the most violent, most insane, most delusive, and most transient of passions, they are required to swear that they will remain in that excited, abnormal, and exhausting condition continuously until death do them part.

The moment we want to believe something, we suddenly see all the arguments for it, and become blind to the arguments against it.

Build a system that even a fool can use, and only a fool will want to use it.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

The philosopher is Nature’s pilot. And there you have our difference: to be n hell is to drift: to be in heaven is to steer.

In your Salvation shelter I saw poverty, misery, cold and hunger. You gave them bread and treacle and dreams of heaven. I give from thirty shillings a week to twelve thousand a year. They find their own dreams; but I look after the drainage.

Those who are not looking for happiness are the most likely to find it, because those who are searching forget that the surest way to be happy is to seek happiness for others.

People die of fright and live of confidence.

Whom do I call educated? First, those who manage well the circumstances they encounter day by day. Next, those who are decent and honorable in their intercourse with all men, bearing easily and good naturedly what is offensive in others and being as agreeable and reasonable to their associates as is humanly possible to be… those who hold their pleasures always under control and are not ultimately overcome by their misfortunes… those who are not spoiled by their successes, who do not desert their true selves but hold their ground steadfastly as wise and sober — minded men.

It is only through labour and painful effort, by grim energy and resolute courage; that we move on to better things.

Do what you know and perception is converted into character.

You don’t have to have a college degree to serve. You don’t have to make your subject and verb agree to serve. You only need a heart full of grace. A soul generated by love.

There are many scapegoats for our sins, but the most popular is providence.

Of all debts men are least willing to pay the taxes. What a satire is this on government! Everywhere they think they get their moneys worth, except for these.

Dictionaries are like watches, the worst is better than none and the best cannot be expected to go quite true.

There is nothing that will kill a man so soon as having nobody to find fault with but himself.

Dancing is a perpendicular expression of a horizontal desire.

His heart was as great as the world, but there was no room in it to hold the memory of a wrong.

No law can be sacred to me but that of my nature. Good and bad are but names very readily transferable to that or this; the only right is what is after my own constitution; the only wrong what is against it.

Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.