George Bernard Shaw

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Democracy is a device that insures we shall be governed no better than we deserve.

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

He never does a proper thing without giving an improper reason for it.

An index is a great leveller.

Hatred is the coward’s revenge for being intimidated.

Ice-cream is exquisite – what a pity it isn’t illegal.

Courageous people do not fear forgiving, for the sake of peace.

Look before you leap for as you sow, ye are like to reap.

All great truths begin as blasphemies.

A healthy body is a guest chamber for the soul: a sick body is a prison.

The real and lasting victories are those of peace, and not of war.

A fool’s brain digests philosophy into folly, science into superstition, and art into pedantry. Hence University education.

The mob is man voluntarily descending to the nature of the beast. Its fit hour of activity is night. Its actions are insane like its whole constitution. It persecutes a principle; it would whip a right; it would tar and feather justice, by inflicting fire and outrage upon the houses and persons of those who have these. It resembles the prank of boys, who run with fire-engines to put out the ruddy aurora streaming to the stars.

If a man be gracious and courteous to strangers, it shows he is a citizen of the world.

If you have inner peace, nobody can force you to be a slave to the outer reality.

We never become really and genuinely our entire and honest selves until we are dead – and not then until we have been dead years and years. People ought to start dead and then they would be honest so much earlier.

We love to expect, and when expectation is either disappointed or gratified, we want to be again expecting.

Be slow to fall into friendship; but when thou art in, continue firm and constant.

Soap and education are not as sudden as a massacre, but they are more deadly in the long run. Training is everything. The peach was once a bitter almond; cauliflower is nothing but cabbage with a college education.

Few things are harder to put up with than the annoyance of a good example.