George Bernard Shaw

What is wrong with priests and popes is that instead of being apostles and saints, they are nothing but empirics who say I know instead of I am learning, and pray for credulity and inertia as wise men pray for skepticism and activity.

The universal regard for money is the one hopeful fact in our civilization. Money is the most important thing in the world. It represents health, strength, honor, generosity and beauty. Not the least of its virtues is that it destroys base people as certainly as it fortifies and dignifies noble people.

If women were as fastidious as men, morally or physically, there would be an end of the race.

Except during the nine months before he draws his first breath, no man manages his affairs as well as a tree does.

Give a man health and a course to steer, and he’ll never stop to trouble about whether he’s happy or not.

A man never tells you anything until you contradict him.

Dear to us are those who love us… but dearer are those who reject us as unworthy, for they add another life; they build a heaven before us whereof we had not dreamed, and thereby supply to us new powers out of the recesses of the spirit, and urge us to new and unattempted performances.

I showed my appreciation of my native land in the usual Irish way: by getting out of it as soon as I possibly could.

It is not what we eat but what we digest that makes us strong; not what we gain but what we save that makes us rich; not what we read but what we remember that makes us learned; and not what we profess but what we practice that gives us integrity.

A good End cannot sanctifie evil Means; nor must we ever do Evil, that Good may come of it. Some Folks think they may Scold, Rail, Hate, Rob and Kill too; so it be but for God’s sake. But nothing in us unlike him, can please him.

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

Suppose the world were only one of God’s jokes, would you work any the less to make it a good joke instead of a bad one?

Those that are little, little things suit.

It is difficult to free fools from the chains they revere.

Do the thing we fear, and the death of fear is certain.

I think there’s a great beauty to having problems. That’s one of the ways we learn.

Whenever you wish to do anything against the law, Cicely, always consult a good solicitor first.

Anyone who thinks must think of the next war as they would of suicide.

Death is the king of this world: ‘Tis his park where he breeds life to feed him. Cries of pain are music for his banquet.

Principles aren’t of much account anyway, except at election time. After that you hang them up to let them season.

Earth laughs in flowers.