George Bernard Shaw

I’m not a teacher: only a fellow-traveler of whom you asked the way. I pointed ahead – ahead of myself as well as you.

When our relatives are at home, we have to think of all their good points or it would be impossible to endure them. But when they are away, we console ourselves for their absence by dwelling on their vices.

I never thought much of the courage of a lion tamer. Inside the cage he is at least safe from people.

He didn’t dare to, because his father had a weak heart and habitually threatened to drop dead if anybody hurt his feelings. You may have noticed that people with weak hearts are the tyrants of English married life.

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

The British soldier can stand up to anything except the British War Office.

Winning is not a sometime thing; it’s an all the time thing. You don’t win once in a while… you don’t do things right once in a while… you do them right all the time. Winning is habit.

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.

To be good is noble, but to teach others how to be good is nobler and less trouble.

In the vain laughter of folly wisdom hears half its applause.

Don’t go around saying the world owes you a living. The world owes you nothing. It was here first.

A man is rich in proportion to the number of things he can let alone.

What is read twice is usually remembered more than what is once written.

People grow through experience if they meet life honestly and courageously. This is how character is built.

I like the silent church before the service begins, better than any preaching.

Should not every apartment in which man dwells be lofty enough to create some obscurity overhead, where flickering shadows may play at evening about the rafters?

Better to keep your mouth shut and appear stupid than to open it and remove all doubt.

I often think that men don’t understand what is noble and what is ignorant, though they always talk about it.

Softness has such a power to it. When you choose to soften into something, it relaxes, opens, tension releases. Stuck energy flows like blood coursing through veins, bringing much needed oxygen. Life force and warmth enters, connection is rekindled. Find the trust you need to allow softness in; it really is healing.

At the end of my life, with just one breath left, if you come, I’ll sit up and sing.

One of the benefits of a college education is to show the boy its little avail.