George Bernard Shaw

…with the black marble which gives the fireplace the air of a miniature family vault, to suggest early Victorian commercial respectability, belief in money, Bible fetichism, fear of hell always at war with fear of poverty, instinctive horror of the passionate character of art, love and Roman Catholic religion, and all the first fruits of plutocracy in the early generations of the industrial revolution.

Statistics show that of those who contract the habit of eating, very few survive.

My method is to take the utmost trouble to find the right thing to say, and then to say it with the utmost levity.

People who say it cannot be done should not interrupt those who are doing it.

Some men see things as they are and ask why. Others dream things that never were and ask why not.

The worst sin… is… to be indifferent.

It matters not how a man dies, but how he lives. The act of dying is not of importance, it lasts so short a time.

Boldness is ever blind, for it sees not dangers and inconveniences whence it is bad in council though good in execution.

There are various orders of beauty, causing men to make fools of themselves in various styles… but there is one order of beauty which seems made to turn the heads not only of men, but of all intelligent mammals, even of women. It is a beauty like that of kittens, or very small downy ducks making gentle rippling noises with their soft bills, or babies just beginning to toddle and to engage in conscious mischief -a beauty with which you can never be angry, but that you feel ready to crush for inability to comprehend the state of mind into which it throws you.

Property is an intellectual production. The game requires coolness, right reasoning, promptness, and patience in the players.

Live, let live, and help live

The Mona Lisa, the Mona Lisa….Leonardo had eye trouble….Art couldn’t explain it….But now we’re safe, since science can explain it. Maybe Milton wrote Paradise Lost because he was blind? And Beethoven wrote the Ninth Symphony because he was deaf…

The first thing a great person does, is make us realize the insignificance of circumstance.

More knowledge may be gained of a man’s real character by a short conversation with one of his servants than from a formal and studied narrative, begun with his pedigree and ended with his funeral.

Sir, a man who cannot get to heaven in a green coat, will not find his way thither the sooner in a gray one.

If you do not take control over your time and your life, other people will gobble it up. If you don’t prioritize yourself, you constantly start falling lower and lower on your list.

She stepped out barefoot on to the grass, her soul naked, sun beating to her heart’s rhythm, bathing her skin. In her mind, she had already escaped.

Man is the only creature who has a nasty mind.

Knowledge exists to be imparted.

Mr. Emerson visited Thoreau at the jail, and the meeting between the two philosophers must have been interesting and somewhat dramatic. The account of the meeting was told me by Miss Maria Thoreau Henry Thoreaus auntHenry, why are you here? Waldo, why are you not here?

A monarch, when good, is entitled to the consideration which we accord to a pirate who keeps Sunday School between crimes; when bad, he is entitled to none at all.