George Bernard Shaw

He who can, does. He who cannot, teaches.

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

Do not do unto others as you would they should do unto you. Their tastes may not be the same.

Money is indeed the most important thing in the world; and all sound and successful personal and national morality should have this fact for its basis.

When Satan makes impure verses, Allah sends a divine tune to cleanse them.

It is all that the young can do for the old, to shock them and keep them up to date.

All great literature is one of two stories; a man goes on a journey or a stranger comes to town.

Books must be read as deliberately and reservedly as they were written.

A multitude of books distracts the mind.

The instruction we find in books is like fire. We fetch it from our neighbours, kindle it at home, communicate it to others, and it becomes the property of all.

We are too civil to books. For a few golden sentences we will turn over and actually read a volume of four or five hundred pages.

Books are the treasured wealth of the world and the fit inheritance of generations and nations.

Tis the good reader that makes the good book.

I haven’t any right to criticize books, and I don’t do it except when I hate them. I often want to criticize Jane Austen, but her books madden me so that I can’t conceal my frenzy from the reader; and therefore I have to stop every time I begin. Every time I read Pride and Prejudice I want to dig her up and beat her over the skull with her own shin-bone.

Why not blame the libraries? They’re full of violent books.

A truly good book teaches me better than to read it. I must lay it down and commence living on its hint… What I began by reading I must finish by acting.

Books are the best of things if well used; if abused, among the worst. They are good for nothing but to inspire. I had better never see a book than be warped by its attraction clean out of my own orbit, and made a satellite instead of a system.

Be careful about reading health books. You may die of a misprint.

Books, not which afford us a cowering enjoyment, but in which each thought is of unusual daring; such as an idle man cannot read, and a timid one would not be entertained by, which even make us dangerous to existing institution – such call I good books.

What can we see, read, acquire, but ourselves. Take the book, my friend, and read your eyes out, you will never find there what I find.

An autobiography is not about pictures; it’s about the stories; it’s about honesty and as much truth as you can tell without coming too close to other people’s privacy.