George Bernard Shaw

You are going to let the fear of poverty govern you life and your reward will be that you will eat, but you will not live.

A broken heart is a very pleasant complaint for a man in London if he has a comfortable income.

The trouble with her is that she lacks the power of conversation but not the power of speech.

If a woman can, by careful selection of a father and nourishment of herself, produce a citizen with efficient senses, sound organs and a good digestion, she should clearly be secured a sufficient reward for that natural service to make her willing to undertake and repeat it.

I would like to take you seriously, but to do so would be an affront to your intelligence.

Life contains but two tragedies. One is not to get your heart's desire; the other is to get it.

It's so hard to know what to do when one wishes earnestly to do right.

Perhaps the greatest social service that can be rendered by anybody to the country and to mankind is to bring up a family.

The natural term of the affection of the human animal for its offspring is six years.

If there was nothing wrong in the world there wouldn't be anything for us to do.

The Old Testament God is a person with body parts and passions. The Church of England God has neither body, parts nor passions, and is therefore not a person.

It is most unwise for people in love to marry.

I have a strong feeling that I shall be glad when I am dead and done for - scrapped at last to make room for somebody better, cleverer, more perfect than myself.

What is virtue but the Trade Unionism of the married?

If you leave the smallest corner of your head vacant for a moment, other people's opinions will rush in from all quarters.

The things most people want to know about are usually none of their business.

Nothing is ever done in this world until men are prepared to kill one another if it is not done.

If you injure your neighbour, better not do it by halves.

A fashion is nothing but an induced epidemic.

Which painting in the National Gallery would I save if there was a fire? The one nearest the door of course.

If I own a large part of Scotland, I can turn the people off the land practically into the sea or across the sea. I can take women in child-bearing and throw them into the snow and leave them there. That has been done. I can do it for no better reason than I think it is better to shoot deer on the land than allow people to live on it.

Creation is a miracle of daily recurrence. 'A miracle a minute' would not be a bad slogan for God.

I enjoy convalescence. It is the part that makes the illness worth while.

What we want is to see the child in pursuit of knowledge, and not knowledge in pursuit of the child.

Virtue is insufficient temptation.

When I was young, I observed that nine out of ten things I did were failures. So I did ten times more work.

Political necessities sometime turn out to be political mistakes.

Never fret for an only son, the idea of failure will never occur to him.

Reading made Don Quixote a gentleman, but believing what he read made him mad.

You have learnt something. That always feels at first as if you had lost something.

All genuinely intellectual work is humorous.

A perpetual holiday is a good working definition of hell.

Most people do not pray; they only beg.

What Englishman will give his mind to politics as long as he can afford to keep a motor car?

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

My method of getting a play across the footlights is like a revolver shooting: every line has a bullet in it and comes with an explosion.

It's easier to replace a dead man than a good picture.

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

While we ourselves are the living graves of murdered animals, how can we expect any ideal living conditions on this earth?

In socialism, private property is anathema, and equal distribution of income the first consideration. In capitalism, private property is cardinal, and distribution left to ensue from the play of free contract and selfish interest on that basis, no matter what anomalies it may present.

We must always think about things, and we must think about things as they are, not as they are said to be.

All my life affection has been showered upon me, and every forward step I have made has been taken in spite of it.

Virtue consists, not in abstaining from vice, but in not desiring it.

There are no secrets better kept than the secrets everybody guesses.

If I were a woman, I'd simply refuse to speak to any man or do anything for men until I'd got the vote.

General consultant to mankind.

Why should we take advice on sex from the pope? If he knows anything about it, he shouldn't!

Men are wise in proportion, not to their experience, but to their capacity for experience.

Find enough clever things to say, and you're a Prime Minister; write them down and you're a Shakespeare.

An asylum for the sane would be empty in America.